Three key security hurdles and how to clear them

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Whatever the challenges, security teams must provide reliable, comprehensive and timely intelligence (Getty Images)

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Discover how security management professionals are tackling operational efficiency, threat intelligence and risk assessment amid rising geopolitical challenges.

A recent report by the International Security Management Association (ISMA) reveals that 60 per cent of security management professionals prioritise operational efficiency and optimisation. Following closely, 56 per cent highlighted the need to enhance threat intelligence generation and analysis, while improving risk assessment is the third-highest priority.

These priorities are closely tied to broader business initiatives aimed at addressing various factors such as geopolitical conditions, business continuity, crisis management, operational growth, supply chain challenges and technological advancements.

Plus, security teams face the daunting task of supporting more initiatives, sometimes with limited resources. Despite these constraints, they must provide reliable, comprehensive and timely security intelligence to support decision-makers. By focusing on operational efficiency, intelligence gathering and risk assessments, security and intelligence teams can address these top priorities.

Level up: actionable tips for accomplishing big priorities

Priority #1: Improving operational efficiency and optimisation

Operational efficiency is crucial for any function, particularly in security where budgets are tight, and staff are limited. The ways in which security teams can create greater operational efficiency include:

• Fostering team agility: Security teams need to quickly identify and prioritise events critical to their organisation to create focus. This requires maintaining a credible, high-quality source list for important areas and being able to pivot to focusing smoothly across different geographies and types of threats. A major challenge is the wide range and complexity of threats, with broad impacts requiring teams to swiftly change priorities. Security teams must be able to seamlessly shift workloads, handoff projects between shifts and smoothly reprioritise to meet new demands without setbacks.
• Leveraging outside experts: Employing security intelligence partners can provide greater bandwidth and location-specific intelligence, enhancing the internal team’s capabilities without additional headcount. This external support helps in validating information and avoiding reliance on biased sources, ensuring more accurate and confident decision-making.
• Planning for the ripple effect: Geopolitical threats often have wide-reaching impact on the organisation, from impacts on global employees and operations to interconnected consequences such as supply chain disruptions or reputational risks. With their unique insights, security professionals should partner closely with other departments, sharing their expertise to support strategic planning and ensure comprehensive preparedness for wide-ranging threat implications.

Priority #2: Enhancing intelligence-gathering in a complex world

Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) have revolutionised intelligence-gathering. Leveraging these technologies can support efficiency and improve intelligence gathering through:

• Data intake and evaluation: These technologies can streamline data collection and analysis, allowing analysts to focus on verifying events and evaluating trends. And the advancement of data modelling allows security and intelligence teams to shift from reactive to proactive strategies.
• Making alerts work harder: Customising alert systems based on specific organisational needs prevents teams from being overwhelmed by irrelevant notifications and ensures valuable intelligence is not overlooked.
• Verifying events: With the rise of misinformation, verifying events through local sources and multiple reliable channels is crucial to providing accurate information to decision-makers.

Priority #3: Developing risk assessments

Effective risk assessments involve timely communication of emerging threats to decision-makers. Key tactics include:

• Confirming the risk appetite: Engaging leaders to define acceptable risk levels helps establish a baseline for security activities, guiding the team’s focus and response strategies.
• Establishing security benchmarks: Defining risk levels and identifying when activities become risks allows for appropriate notifications and actions, ensuring leadership is informed about significant threats.
• Creating a communications plan: Developing a clear reporting strategy ensures leaders receive relevant updates during regular operations and crises. Regular, concise reports help leaders understand the impact of events and the effectiveness of security measures.

Addressing priorities to deliver greater value

As the geopolitical risk landscape evolves, security and intelligence operations face increasing complexity. Teams must protect more assets across diverse regions, each with unique threats and risk tolerances. Establishing strong foundational processes and leveraging innovative technologies can eliminate major pain points, enhancing the performance of security teams.

When security teams prioritize operational efficiency, intelligence gathering, and risk assessments, organisations can strengthen their physical security and risk intelligence efforts, enabling smarter, faster and more accurate responses to threats.

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