Security Dogs
Humans and dogs enjoy a special relationship, both social and professional. For the latter, there are many examples with which we are all familiar: SWAT teams use dogs to help clear a room, soldiers use dogs to detect IEDs, isolated facilities use dogs to guard against perimeter breaches, customs agencies use dogs to sniff out…
Read MoreParking Lot Security
Parking lots are an integral part of our modern lives. They are attached to the places we go to shop or for work. They can serve a logistical function as in “Let’s meet at the Walmart parking lot to carpool to the picnic.” And parking lots can also be dangerous places. They are convenient locales…
Read MoreFirst Female Suicide Bomber
It may seem that suicide bombers are an artifact of our modern age, a product of a world that has become more violent over the last century. While there is plenty of room to dispute whether violence is on the rise or descending, you may not be aware of the story of the first suicide…
Read MoreNew CCTV Operator Training
CCTV today is ubiquitous, so many businesses and municipalities (and homeowners) use cameras; they are everywhere. But when it comes to CCTV training, it’s almost always around learning to use the equipment itself. The training that exists is such as a camera…
Read More10 Benefits of Red Teaming
1 Red Teaming is an excellent training tool. It teaches skills to security officers that enable them to handle threats on an ongoing basis so that when the officer is confronted with ‘the real deal’ he already has experience under his belt. Without red teaming, the officer has neither the skills nor the experience…
Read MoreUpdating OSINT Cycles
In the wake of the information explosion and the dramatic changes in open-source intelligence we’ve experienced over the last decades, the traditional intelligence cycle used in OSINT is no longer adequate, some would say. Here are some of the issues: Information consumers are now also information producers, posting, blogging and tweeting with abandon. It’s worth…
Read MoreBetter Security Officers
Security officers are minimum wage workers. Their typically lower pay is often cited as a reason for high attrition rates and the unfortunate, sometimes disparaging impression that security officers are not up to snuff. Look at other minimum wage workers: dishwashers, cashiers, fast food preppers, janitors or product demonstrators to name a random grouping. In…
Read MoreThe Power of OSINT
Last Saturday, a devastating terrorist attack led to multiple casualties during a hate crime against a Pittsburgh synagogue. The man Robert Bowers, aged 46, accused of committing the attack had posted an online message on a social platform called Gab in which he announced his intention to attack. His Gab account showed that he had…
Read MoreSixteen Years of Predictive Profiling
Back in 2002, I was driving with a colleague to see a client in Palmdale, California, a couple hours’ drive outside of Los Angeles. This was only a few months after 9/11 when the country and the world were looking for an understanding of and solutions to the specter of terrorism. We were talking about…
Read MoreAge of Fear?
[S]ince love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513 Last week’s post concerned the ‘definition’ of terrorism. While usually politically motivated, terrorism as a phenomenon has itself become politicized. Terrorists and their supporters are of course…
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