Hi All,

Read this nice article on the efforts of one particular school district to make their environments safer.

Cameras are, of course, a necessary piece of a Security Management program. Be cautious, however, of over-reliance on them or, more accurately, mis-reliance on them, that is, blindly thinking that they will bring great prevention dividends. Don’t get me wrong; cameras are immensely valuable. Just be watchful in avoiding misattributing to them an over-capability to actually prevent incidents.

Perhaps they may bring a deterrence effect. Be reasonable, however, in your assessment of this effect.

We all have experienced the well-intentioned (though riddled with fear) hospital executive who, after an incident, demanded more cameras when cameras would never have had any beneficial preventive effect on the incident. Different processes and technologies are best leveraged where they have the most impact. Some are fitting for mitigation and prevention, others for response, recovery, etc.

Be always on the lookout for look-at-me, security theater work that may bring an increase of feeling safer when, really, nothing substantively changes for the better, that is, no one is really safer.

Let us bring reasonableness and well-developed business acumen to our collaborative work to make things safer in our healthcare environments, schools, and everywhere else.

Until later…