Where Next for the Professionalization of Security?

Abstract

The scope of professional practice within security risk management has broadened substantially in the new millennium. As corporations are now operating within an increasingly complex, globalized business environment, they often have to take greater risks in doing so, and rely more on their security departments and other organizational risk management functions to mitigate these. The new millennium has also presented a number of new risks and regulatory requirements affecting business, as highlighted in the research by Briggs and Edwards (2006) on the changing role of corporate security departments. Growing regulatory controls on corporations, following the high-profile collapses of Enron in 2001 and World Com and Tyco in 2002, and heightened concern globally about the problems of bribery, corruption and money laundering have raised the status of organizational risk management within corporate governance structures. The events of 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks around the world have signalled that corporations are viable terrorist targets and afforded greater priority to business continuity and crisis management within organizations. Most recently, the increasing threat of cyber-attack and the risks to organizations associated with information security breaches has placed security departments under pressure to integrate their activities better with those of corporate IT departments, in order to address converged security threats (Azeem et al., 2013).