What on earth do “Water Protectors”, “Doxxing”, or “Valve Turners” have in common? These arcane terms describe different tactics used within the murky world of pipeline activism and protest. Pipeline protests – a familiar headache in the oil and gas industry – had been in a kind of remission until … Read more
At the risk of tooting our own horn, here at Butchko we quietly put our heads together and did something really innovative and different. Between our small group of professionals, we have something like 80-years of collective experience in the security business; threat and risk, security planning, design, implementation…the whole … Read more
When does it make sense for a business to consider investment in security protection measures such as alarms, barriers, cyber controls, or guards? Spending on security protective measures for small to medium sized businesses is a big deal even in the best of times. In the absence of a well-calculated … Read more
The recent article “Defining the threat in the energy sector,” (CSO Online, 12 April 2016) makes an excellent point about the analysis of threat, that we at Butchko have hammered on for as long as we can remember. Threat must to be relevant, or it is not a threat. How … Read more
Today’s SecurityInfoWatch article entitled, “New threat metrics motivate integrators to offer enhanced solutions,” provides great insight into the needs of and components to programmatic risk management. At Butchko, we support Aronson Security Group’s (ASG) initiative in this area – not simply because is aligns with our own recommended approach, but … Read more
A colleague posed an interesting question to me the other day. “Why isn’t security included earlier in design projects?” When a client starts a design-build project, they invite many specialty consultants to collaborate, but security is often left off the invitation list. Instead of coming in at the beginning of … Read more
When security budgets are lean, the first question that security leaders should ask themselves is this: does the actual risk at a facility merit the expense? Certainly “standard of care” and appropriate local codes and standards must be built into facilities. However, asking, “should I do more?” is critical when … Read more
Pearl Harbor, the French ‘Maginot Line’ of early World War II, or fighting the war on terror exclusively with Predator Drones are all examples of how using tactics from the “last war” are bound to fail in the present. The feared American dreadnoughts of World War I were quickly sent … Read more
When I sat down in 2007 to write the first edition of Integrated Security Systems Design, part of the driving force was that I was finding integrated security system IP networks were, for the most part, unsecured. Tragically, eight years later, that situation has not changed very much. Think about that … Read more
Threat is the “fissile material” needed to activate the individual components of asset, vulnerability, impact, consequence, and likelihood in the calculation of risk. It is threat that initiates the sequence of relationships and events that, together, combine to elevate or lower risk. It is important to understand threat in this … Read more