Art and Science of Protection Research Paper

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Protection Discipline

The art and science of protection has evolved and transformed over the past decades where new levels of its requirements are in high demand. This structural shift in the needs for protection have also created the environment where stark contrasts between approaches and industry becomes rather evident. These noticeable differences need to be addressed in order to successfully and truly understand how this process can be maximized for effectiveness, efficiency and economics.

The purpose of this essay is to highlight and describe the different requirements, limits of authority, limits of force, material assets, ethics and best practices of three differing and distinct realms of protection. The essay will first examine physical protection be highlighting aspects of its use in the U.S. Federal Government. The essay will then explain information protection highlighted how the U.S. Military uses this type of protection and how it is reflected in their practices. This type of protection revolves around the idea of national resource protection. Finally this essay will discuss how the private individual or corporation demonstrates transoport protection and the circumstances in which it is used.

The essay will ultimately argue that protection itself is dependent upon the relative situation and the overall strategic aims of the organization that is practicing these protection services. This idea is center to the difference of qualities and requirements that are used to value and judge the impact of the protection services that are being demonstrated in all three of these very important arenas.

Demonstrating Physical Protection

Aspects of Physical Security

Physical security requires the building or critical thing being protected be secure from outside forces and dangers. Securing a building requires a deep knowledge of physical security aspects of protective security. Security forces that take posts on buildings or critical sites need to be aligned with overall strategic aims of the protective effort. In other words, advanced analysis and intelligence must be incorporated with security event. Risk analysis is an important aspect of physical security and the proper analysis requires that risks are put in their proper perspective. Furthermore, security agents working the job, must be aligned to these intentions.

Many times physical security may not be pleasing to the eye and there may be some backlash from key players within the decision making process. It is important to prioritize the right risk and placing aesthetics over security is not necessarily a good idea. In addition, all entrances to a building or critical sight must be secured. These openings are key to the actual security of the building. These key points must be accounted for in the larger scheme of any physical security scheme.

Once security standards have been put into place it is necessary for management and those who believe they are above the rules to ignore certain physical security measures. This can be exemplified in TSA lines in Federally controlled airports. This can be a mistake and allowing certain privileged people to ignore security standards creates a poor precedent and reveals many weak spots of the security plan. IDs and badges are a must to gain entrance and exit to any critical sight or building that requires physical security.

Mastering the technology is important for any physical security effort to be successful in the long run. Secret service agents must be proficient at their weapons and the computer and IT professionals working in other aspects of physical security must also be prudently trained on their technological aspects to the jobs they perform. A piece of technology becomes a burden if it is not purposefully employed in any effective or efficient means. The best approach is to keep things simple as possible and let the truth ring out.

Ethics and Mission

The act of physical protection requires training, safety and solid leadership. Those doing the protecting must be highly conditioned to ignore their own personal well being and safety for another person. This type of behavior must be molded and conditioned within the secret service and other agencies, so the agent thinks about the asset first and his own self-protection second. This type of duty suggests that those in the physical protection environment at the U.S. government level have been programmed to follow orders without question and provide useful and practical human chattel to manipulate and coerce as those who see fit wish to do.

Agency Applications

Physical security is exemplified by the U.S. Department of Homeland security. The materialistic world view that understands the nation's most valuable materialistic and physical objects are to be protected.

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Physical security trumps emotional and intellectual security in many cases of this type of physical security, as often times irrational overbearing measures are taken to minimize risk. Physical security is emphasized in this area by the DHS as demonstrated by their organizational leader sip and their policies.

The DHS is home to the Federal Protective Service. According to the DHS's website, "The Federal Protective Service protects Federal Facilities, their occupants, and visitors by providing superior law enforcement and protective security services and leveraging our access to the intelligence and information resources of our network of federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector partners. From our frontline law enforcement and security personnel to those who support the operations of the Service, we approach our mission as one team. Every day we protect the homeland by managing risk and ensuring continuity for one of the most crucial elements of our national critical infrastructure -- the people and our nation's Federal Facilities."

The FPS has enormous mission and may be too much to handle in the way it is currently being run. The FPS has more than 1400 employees who help oversee nearly 15000 private security personnel. "In the most recent GAO report in May, the agency said an official from one of the Federal Protective Service's contract guard companies had reported that about 38% of its 350 guards never received mandatory screener training. Without ensuring that all guards receive training on how to respond to active-shooter incidents at federal facilities, FPS has limited assurance that its guards are prepared for this threat." (Markon, 2014). The Federal Government may have overreached its ability to protect so many of its perceived assets. Perhaps the problem lies in the value assessing process. Some things may not need protection.

The Secret Service, is another representation of how physical protective services are explicitly demonstrated at the U.S. Federal Government. This agency has been installed since the President McKinley assignation in 1901. This organization represents the more traditional role of protective services as its scope of duties also encompasses law enforcement investigations. According to its website " applicants should have either a four-year college degree or a combination of education and criminal investigative experience, be in good physical condition, and have a record that is clear of criminal behavior. All new agents spend 11 weeks in Glynco, Georgia, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are taught basic police skills. These basic skills include law, firearms training, defensive tactics and report writing. After completing the first school, all Secret Service agents come to Washington, D.C., where they undergo 16 additional weeks of training. " The secret service was authorized by law 18 USC 3056 to protect the important leaders of our country and of our allies.

The scope and power of the U.S. Federal Government lies in the consent it is given by its constituents. The need for protective services in all shapes and forms can be delivered by the U.S. Federal Government if the public mandates such action. It is important to remember that consent and balance are needed in order for protective services to be effective at such a widespread level. The millions and millions of people under the protection of the U.S. Federal Government appears in many ways that are distinct and unique.

Information Security

Protecting Information

It seems that a wide range of ideas related to the creation of security of information. Protecting information may mean many things to many different people, as the definition of information is quite vague in many ways. The digitization of information also makes the protection of it that much harder. Cyberspace is not a reality we can sense without a tool, and makes the protecting of this area very challenging if not impossible.

Saltzer & Shroeder (1975) suggested "Many different designs have been proposed and mechanisms implemented for protecting information in computer systems. One reason for differences among protection schemes is their different functional properties -- the kinds of access control that can be expressed naturally and enforced. It is convenient to divide protection schemes according to their functional properties. One should recognize that concentration on protection and authentication mechanisms provides a narrow view of information security, and that a narrow view is dangerous. The objective of a secure system is to prevent all unauthorized use of information, a negative kind of requirement. It is hard to prove that this negative requirement has been achieved, for one must demonstrate that every….....

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