What is Integrated Security?
FIRST Security is well known as a security guarding company, but as a provider of ‘integrated security’, FIRST is a whole lot more than just boots on the ground, writes Brian Switala, General Manager – Strategic Accounts.
It would be an understatement to say that the provision of security services has undergone big changes over the past couple of decades. Technology has played a key role in complicating the threat landscape, but it has also provided us with new tools to counter the threats.
At FIRST Security, we refer to how we deliver security services as ‘integrated security’. It’s a term that can mean different things, including the merging of traditional approaches to security with technologically enabled measures.
An ‘integrated security system’, for example, usually refers to the combining or ‘integrating’ of two or more electronic security systems, such as access control, video surveillance and intruder detection. It can also refer to a ‘wide angled’ approach to security that incorporates not only physical security measures, like guarding and CCTV, but also cyber security, health and safety, and business continuity, etc.
When we mention our ‘Integrated Security Solution Model’, what we’re talking about is the approach we take to partnering with our clients to understand their risks, needs and pain points in order to develop a holistic and tailored solution to their complex security problems. It’s about effectively managing our client’s full spectrum of security risks.
Using this model, we work with you to assess and deliver what your organisation needs to create a safe, secure and successful environment, and we do so via three distinct yet interrelated areas: risk management, personnel, and technology:
Risk Management
Fundamentally, our role is the protection of your people, assets and reputation from the potential harm caused by security breaches. In other words, we assist you in managing security-related risks to your people, operations, and reputation.
There is no point us recommending a set of security services to you if these are not directly focused on the effective management of your security risks. We need to understand your organisation and the risks it faces before we can protect it. This is where our risk management approach comes in.
The first step in understanding your risk landscape is to understand your organisation, its operations, strategic objectives, and what it needs to protect. In the language of the international risk management standard ISO 31000, this is referred to as “establishing the context”.
From there, it’s about identifying and assessing threats, vulnerabilities, and the resulting levels of risk, and then suggesting security controls designed to address and mitigate these. We walk our clients through this via security threat and vulnerability assessments, and via an understanding of the broad spectrum of possible security mitigations.
It’s an approach that ensures that the security controls your organisation has in place are aligned with its overall strategy. Importantly, it ensures that security plays its role as a ‘strategic enabler’ by enabling your organisation to achieve its strategic objectives free from harm, loss, and disruption.
Security can be a strategic enabler when a risk-based approach is taken and when the security provider and its client share a trusted partnership. Your issues or concerns will change as your marketplace and your strategy evolves, and your threat landscape is also constantly changing. A trusted, enduring relationship is therefore key.
Personnel
This is FIRST Security’s ‘bread and butter’. With around 2,400 staff and 220 patrol vehicles, FIRST is one of the largest providers of security personnel services in the country.
Our blue and white liveried patrol vehicles and our distinctive security officer uniforms are widely recognised, but what’s probably less known is the breadth of roles our security officers perform.
In addition to guarding and patrolling roles, our security officers are also engaged in event security and concierge roles; Council animal, noise, and smoke management; prisoner escort and court custodial services; profit protection and loss prevention; incident management and response; managed isolation and quarantine facility security; electronic monitoring of offenders; and a range of other protective services.
Our people are more than just boots on the ground. They are professional, well trained, and trusted to deliver security outcomes in a wide range of contexts. And having claimed seven awards at the recent 2021 New Zealand Security Awards, they are also a multi-award-winning team.
As part of an integrated security solution, security personnel are an important security measure, and they can play a key role in ensuring that all aspects of the solution – both technological and human – are working together well.
Technology
I’m guessing that ‘technology’ isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think FIRST Security. It’s a little-known fact that FIRST is actually a leader in the application of technology to the provision of physical security services.
Our in-house staff welfare and workflow systems, for example, enable us to provide our clients with high levels of visibility, and our fleet management and monitoring systems help us to minimise safety risks and our impact on the environment.
FIRST is a future-focused provider, and we believe we understand better than most the interface between people and technology in the security space. Importantly, we’ve developing some ground-breaking new platforms that we are releasing in coming months, and I’m looking forward to sharing more news about these in the very near future.
