What's wrong with this?

Or, maybe the title should have been is this the best way to deal with the problem. This news story from North Carolina brings up a couple of key points in a just a few lines.

First the problem is on-going and not a single loss event.
"An uptown church is shutting its doors more often after a recent rash of robberies."
Ok good, at least we know they aren't making knee-jerk reactions and spending money for just one loss event. Sadly in many instances, and it sure as heck isn't limited to houses of worship, organizations get a little nuts after some event and jump through hoops to make themselves feel better - or that they are safe again. This is not to say that after each and every loss event there shouldn't be a review to improve security planning; it just means that this review need not always result in more spending.

Second, there is a societal fixation on cameras.
"The church plans to buy newer, better security cameras"
Does anyone out there still believe that closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV, aka security cameras) deter any crime? Maybe they do, a little, but if they were effective at it then we might not see so many videos of crime on the news. Consider this, cameras offer a tools for following up, or investigating, activities after they occur. Now this is indeed a very important tool and one that should not be overlooked. Unless someone is monitoring the CCTV system there will be no immediate response to a wrongful act.
So third, just installing better cameras will not likely reduce the number of incidents that occur, unless they are being committed by a select few individuals who, once apprehended, are not able to continue. If not, the losses will continue and the police will more arrests - AND the organization will continue to lose valuable assets. CCTV systems, in a traditional sense, create a nice record of what happened but they are not effective at facilitating the intervention necessary to stop the event.

Look, I'm not saying they shouldn't upgrade their CCTV system. What I am saying is, "hey, let's look into how we might be able to prevent these events from happening in the first place." Maybe, just maybe, catching one of these thieves in the act and counseling them might result in a much better outcome than just having them arrested at some later time.

So how could we prevent it from happening??? I think in the next I might discuss some newer tools - and some old tools.

Fresh start - in more ways than one

Clearly I haven't been posting any information to this blog in quite some time, and for good reasons... Today, however, signals a fresh start for the blog counter for another really good reason. I just learned that Sitemeter had started installing ad cookies on its member sites. So I've moved to a new counter service, and I figured I'd take this time to go ahead and start over - with the counter and with new posts.

Also, some of you may know that I've stopped consulting full-time and returned to the world of "doing" security. I know, I know. You're asking why anyone would do that; give up the cushy hours, the fun travel, eh, you get the point. Suffice it to say it was just time to go ahead and get back into the game.

Stay tuned. More to come (hopefully more regularly)