Neill Catton, MD CIS Security and Former Chair, City Security Council on improving partnership working in 2022
We asked Neil Catton, MD CIS Security and Former Chair, City Security Council: How can we improve interoperability and partnership working in 2022?
Speaking as a member of the City Security Council, there have been some significant steps forward in the collaborative approach, not only with law enforcement but between security companies and industry associations. I think this can be improved upon further by the sharing of information and benchmarking between companies. For example, Health and Safety statistics and reasons for people leaving our sector, possibly. This would allow companies to measure their performance.
I appreciate some of this could be sensitive but if companies created NDAs it could be achieved, or alternatively, an average of all company information could be used. Whilst intelligence is important and a number of sharing applications are in place, security organisations should also look to share property information leaks, power issues, engineering and lifts. Learning from best practice could be shared, which in turn, will assist all in preparing employees for their role and increasing service levels and perception.
My experience of partnering with the City of London Police has been excellent this year.
I believe that this does work elsewhere; to improve this and create a greater national feeling of partnership, private security organisations should be part of a national policing and private security forum.
Each has a great deal to offer in respect of training, knowledge, mentoring and resourcing. I am sure clients would buy in to these links, therefore driving security businesses to be part of a closer alliance with policing. There would need “buy in” from company leaders to make sure the effectiveness of initiatives reaches the front-line security professionals.
From my perspective, this is an open door and something that the private security sector would very much welcome.
