Building organisational resilience through a designed-in security management approach

The body of security knowledge can be defined as varied, wide-ranging and somewhat fragmented. There have been attempts to link aspects of corporate security with aspects of national security; however, the public–private sector issue and partnership development have not always been easily addressed or resolved. Arguably, the failing state body of knowledge is being approached from either an economic or political science perspective, and because of this, key threats facing individual organisations, such as insider crime, and emerging entrepreneurship and crime, are not always addressed appropriately. As such, senior management need to reduce their organisations’ vulnerability by reappraising their risk level and placing security within a more holistic context. By viewing security as a core value, it should be possible for managers to adopt a new approach to defining their risk management strategy and getting the various functions of the organisation to embrace security and intelligence activities. In order to be effective, security needs to be designed into the organisation’s structure and operating system. Where this is the case, a security culture is likely to emerge that provides both the organisation and partner organisations with a fresh vision for dealing with business continuity issues.