Management protocol for physical security

Keep your organization secure with robust physical security. Let Knighthood reduce the risks to your organization’s people, information, and assets. Knighthood adopts the following steps to ensure:

• Improving security of the organization
• Defining a physical security management cycle

What is Physical Security?

Physical security is a critical part of your safety plan. It entails a combination of physical and procedural measures to protect people, information, and assets. It should be used in conjunction with security measures in other areas, such as personnel, information handling, communications, and ICT.

Understand the Benefits of Robust Physical Security

Having effective physical security measures can help you:

• Ensure the safety of your people, customers, and the public
• Stop unauthorized access to premises, information, or assets
• Retain the trust and confidence of those you serve or work with
• Provide services without disruption when faced with a high-threat level or disaster.

Know the Threats and Risks You Need to Manage

Physical security threats can come from both within and outside your organisation, such as visitors, contractors, the public, and external groups. Threats apply to people working in the office, as well as those working away from it. Potential threats include:

• Crime (personal and property)
• Workplace violence (assaults, harassment, revenge attacks)
• Civil disturbances (protests, riots)
• Natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, pandemics)
• Industrial disasters (explosions, fires, collapses)
• Terrorist acts (bombings, extortion, ‘white powder’ incidents, kidnappings)
• Other risks (disturbed people, traffic accidents).

Physical security breaches within your organisation can be accidental, such as when people don’t recognize the risk of tailgating and allow unauthorised people access to secure areas.

Risk-Based Approach to Physical Security

Your organization’s context and potential threats should be considered when determining the physical security measures necessary. By taking a risk-based approach, one can ensure the security measures used are timely and effective.

Identify the people, information, physical assets, and functions that require protection.

It is important to understand the value and sensitivity of information and assets so that the potential risks can be accurately assessed.

Business Impact Levels (BILs) can be used to measure the potential impact of harm, compromise, or unavailability on people, information, or assets. Examples of such threats include:

• Customer aggression
• Stolen property
• Tampering with security systems to gain unauthorized access out of hours
• Unauthorized access to premises to steal valuable information.

For each scenario, consider the risks to:

• The public
• People, property, operations, reputation, finances, or business processes.

A Security Culture

Everyone in your organization contributes to your security culture. Physical security investments alone will not be effective without the right culture—it only takes one person being tailgated or an unsecured reception area to put your entire organization at risk.

Knighthood works with customers to help with:

• Identifying security risks
• Establishing physical security policies
• Encouraging secure practices
• Reporting security issues and incidents

We work with customers to provide security awareness communications, training, and support to foster a strong security culture. We strive to ensure physical security policies are communicated to all employees and partners.

Knighthood constantly communicates with all stakeholders within our customer base to encourage people to report emerging concerns or near-misses, and views them as good corporate citizens rather than troublemakers.

Security Planning Process

Knighthood creates a physical security plan for your organization that:

• reflects the level of security risk in your physical environment
• aligns with your business needs and legal obligations
• builds on the existing framework and plan for your organization’s security.

We guarantee that our physical security planning:

• takes into account the heightened risks in locations with collections of information and physical assets, and larger numbers of people
• addresses the specific needs of your organization’s different work sites
• includes measures that can be adjusted to meet increased threat levels and changes in the overall national threat level
• includes a system of controls and barriers to help your organization deter, detect, delay, and respond to any threat, internal or external
• accounts for the risks associated with shared facilities, and the security requirements for working away from the office.