Security 101: Barriers in Security
Earlier in this series, we’ve written more specifically about fences and bollards, being the most common forms of physical barriers. Today, we’ll take a shorter and more general approach, and leave the subject of barriers alone for a while. Although barriers are important in security, there are other subjects as well…
Barriers and their role in Security
We erect barriers of different sorts every day, and they hold a special place in the hearts of every security professional out there…
Okay, so it’s not all that romantic, but barriers of varying shapes and sizes do play important parts in planning and implementing a security scheme, both large and small.
So what do they do, and why do we use them? You probably know a little something about barriers already, so this will be a short lesson. Nice, huh?
Physical Barriers
This could, literally, be anything that we use to either block something out, or keep something in. A wall, a window, a fence, a hedge, a mote, a row of people with their arms interlinked… A physical barrier will place an obstacle in the way of someone or something that tries to cross your “border”, making the task anything from a little bit more bothersome to nigh on impossible. We won’t say impossible, because only a very few things in this life are just that, and breaking a barrier isn’t one of them.
A physical barrier can also be a mental, or psychological barrier, but we’ll get back to that in the next paragraph, entitled….
Psychological Barriers
Psychological barriers are barriers that use the mental, moral boundaries inside people to work their magic. This can be anything as well, but a psychological barrier is rarely a very effective physical barrier, while a physical barrier often is as good a psychological one. Confused? We’ll take it a bit further still.
Think of the yellow line in the middle of the road. That’s a psychological barrier. You’re warned not to cross it, and usually, you won’t. There’s no wall, however, so the only thing holding you back is your mind and your sense of right and wrong.
Now, a sign on a lawn saying “Don’t step on the grass” is the same thing. You could have built a wall around that lawn, but that would be overkill, and in most cases, a sign is enough. The psychological barrier works wonders on most people, and is far nicer than a huge wall or fence, or hedge, for that matter.
Placing barriers in the way of people or other creatures is a definite fundamental part of any security scheme, but careful consideration must be done before erecting one of them – if the wrong “class” of barrier is used, the results of the implementation may be quite different from what we intended in the first place.
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