Security Breaches, and the managers who make them happen

In any given security operation, there are a few people that stand out as the biggest threat to whatever it is the operation is protecting. It’s the security people themselves.

In general, the security department’s employees will know everything there is to know when it comes to sensitive information, procedures and routines, initiatives and plans. When looking at that sentence, it’s easy to see why security itself is the biggest threat to security. It all depends on having employees you can trust, and who will stay loyal, and that isn’t easy to maintain.

Now, it’s probably impossible to completely avoid the occasional rogue employee, but there is one surefire way of minimizing the risk, and the number of incidents. It’s called mutual respect. If an employee is unhappy, he or she is a risk to the company, but not necessarily a serious threat. However, if that person is a security employee, then that slight risk becomes a serious and immediate threat.

Keeping security personnel happy isn’t hard, it’s a matter of treating them the same as any other employee, and also extending the same courtesy, benefits, trust and opportunities as any other would get. Above all, when something goes wrong, as it sometimes does, then the support of the company must be in place, and the manager or supervisor must know where they’re supposed to be, and what they’re supposed to do. Anything else can, and usually will have dire consequences.

In a series of posts here, I will outline failures in two very sensitive security operations that may have had, and surely will have, such consequences if the failures aren’t rectified in time. As we speak, these security breaches are still ongoing, and will very likely have devastating consequences in the near future.

The first security failures involving possible future breaches by low level disgruntled employees, and involving current breaches by supervisor or manager level employees failing to do their duties involves a US government installation that many will recognize.

Link will be here, and the article is forthcoming.