Marianna Perry of the National Crime Prevention Institute at the University of Louisville has a solid article in Buildings Magazine this month about Proactive vs. Reactive Security. The premise of her position is that business owners need to change the way they think about security (the proactive part) and do a better job of connecting policy to process.
Her guidelines for making changes to a security plan include the following steps:
- A vulnerability assessment.
- A cost benefit analysis
- System tests for anything you decide to implement (hardware, processes, etc.)
This is all logical, sound advice and any property owner/manager would benefit from following Ms. Perry’s guidance and recommendations. However, the one piece that is missing from her outline that ties everything together is effective, integrated data collection tools.
Both the vulnerability assessment stage and ongoing evaluation, post implementation of systems or processes is only as good as the data you are evaluating.
Building Engines customers use our suite of risk management tools for collecting data on visitor activity, incident tracking and reporting, fire & life safety event management as well as certificate of insurance tracking.
The daily use of these tools, connected to the policies and procedures our clients, creates the opportunity for data-driven analysis and decision making. No single tool or process can promise to dramatically improve the risk profile of a property or portfolio. The best chance of achieving your goals and seeing dramatic results comes from a combination of effective and thoughtful planning and the implementation and use of data collection tools by the operations team.
