Skip Navigation

In an age where technology is presented as the solution to every problem, clients ask us regularly why they continue to pay for guard services when security system advancements purport to do what once required multiple officers. It is a legitimate question. With the help of AI, once-static security technologies now conduct analytics, learn environments, and flag anomalies. One of the traditional roles of a security officer was to watch cameras or monitor access control for suspicious activity. Now systems do that on their own, going so far as to send automated alerts when something looks wrong.

This dilemma is not unique to security. Changes to the workforce are coming for every industry, many of which were originally thought to be immune to automation. White collar work requiring subjective decision making and complex problem solving is being outsourced to AI programs. Service jobs are being absorbed by online retail. Subject matter experts are being challenged by large language models that produce reams of knowledge on demand. As technology becomes more advanced, the roles people play in organizations will be drastically altered.

Instead of asking whether technology should be utilized in place of human beings, businesses should determine how human operations can be enhanced by it. By foreseeing and planning for these changes instead of opposing or resisting them, leaders can offer services that exceed those produced by traditional models. The programs that outperform over the coming years will not be the ones that chose either people or technology. They will be the ones that stopped choosing altogether.

So what of security, then? How should a client approach the choice between investing in guard services or advanced technologies? The answer to this question is found in the false assumption that a choice is necessary. Consider: a camera with analytics can tell you that someone is on the loading dock at three in the morning. What it can’t do, though, is walk to the location, ask the individual questions, determine if this person is a contractor who arrived early or someone casing the building, and use years of experience and training to determine what next steps to take. Technology is extraordinary at detection but poor at judgment and presence. Officers are the reverse — strong on judgment and presence but limited in how much they can watch or do at once. Invest in only one, and the result is half of a program.

There is a second reason the choice is a false one, and it has less to do with what technology can do than with what our clients are now defending against. A generation ago, most sites were built to deter vandals and thieves. Today a security program has to account for threats arriving from every direction — workplace violence, organized retail crime, cyber-enabled fraud, intellectual property theft, civil disruption, targeted attacks. Those threats rarely announce themselves on a camera feed, and they are not stopped by a locked door. A program built to react to incidents after they occur is inadequate no matter how sophisticated its equipment.

The solution, then, is to unite humans and technology from the start. AI-driven threat detection is useless if no one on site knows how the system works or what to do when an alert is sent. Similarly, a motivated, technically-minded officer is hobbled by an outdated analog system that was not built to operate in today’s threat landscape. Bolting one onto the other after the fact produces two half-programs that do not talk to each other.

So what does that actually look like? A holistic security program empowers officers to solve problems instead of just standing stoically. It takes everything the industry has learned over decades of experience — movement patterns, body language, suspicious activity, out-of-place behaviors and belongings — and builds it into systems that detect those indicators and convert them into actionable intelligence. And it relies on people who know their clients well enough to anticipate what they need, then step in with a customized plan and the knowledge necessary to execute it.

In practice, this can look like remote monitoring and command center support that extends coverage well beyond what any single post can see, using video analytics to flag anomalies and route that information to a nearby officer prepared to respond. It can include systems that gather license plate data, turning an isolated incident into a recognizable pattern that officers can use to prevent future incidents. None of these tools replace an officer. Together, they make the officer on duty better informed than the officer on duty the day before.

In short, the security of tomorrow is going to require technology solutions using every tool available alongside security professionals willing to embrace that technology. Disruption is imminent. To be ready for tomorrow, start preparing today.

If you are weighing the question posed at the beginning of this article — whether to shift your budget from people to technology — it is worth answering deliberately, before a budget cycle answers it for you. Titan Security is dedicated to helping you answer it. We will assess your current program, the technology in place, and how well the two work together, then show you what an integrated posture would look like at your site.

Thought Leadership by Tom Henkey, CEM
Vice President of Emergency Management, Titan Security Group

Across the country, in locations both urban and suburban, property managers are dealing with an emerging threat unique to our digital age. Young offenders are accessing building rooftops by literally any means necessary, all to film short video clips for social media.

It is called “rooftopping” or urban exploration – urbex for short. Videos are regularly popping up on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit and other platforms. The youthful trespassers view the activity as harmless, or at most a victimless crime. Yet property owners are often left with badly damaged doors and locks, and enormous liability concerns.

From a deterrence and risk mitigation perspective, it is vital that property management, engineering, and security teams work closely together to recognize the hazard and reduce any vulnerabilities. There are identifiers and patterns of behavior which can flag would-be offenders and prevent unauthorized access.

Young rooftoppers will seek any available access points to a structure, and may perform extensive surveillance to determine the path of least resistance. Common points of entry include via the main lobby by piggybacking employees or trying to talk their way past personnel at the security desk. Other points of entry include service entrances, loading docks, or attached parking garages. They may also make false appointments at shared working spaces (Regus, WeWork, etc.) in commercial office buildings to gain access to occupied floors.

As soon as they are inside the building envelope, they will seek to go vertical via elevators or emergency stairwells. (And yes, they will climb 50 flights of stairs to reach the roof.) These individuals have no qualms about doing major damage to doors, doorframes, and/or locks. Any barrier between them and their imagined rooftop video glory is fair game.

Demographically, offenders will be in their late teens to mid-20s and overwhelmingly male. They travel in small groups of two to five individuals and will be casually dressed in jeans or cargo pants, and are likely to be carrying multiple backpacks or messenger bags. They will be carrying prying tools or large screwdrivers in their bags, and likely also “selfie-sticks” to take smartphone video.

Thankfully, there are extensive and cost-effective steps that property managers can take to counter this risk. First and foremost is to walk the path leading to any vertical access routes – stairwells or elevators – with the mindset of a trespasser trying to reach the roof. Look for any unsecured doors, and crawlspaces, any service hallways out of the view of security personnel. This is precisely the surveillance that will be performed by potential rooftoppers. Situational awareness of any potential vulnerabilities, and of the traits of potential trespassers, is half the battle.

There are multiple steps which may be taken to harden or secure access routes:

Finally, establish clear procedures for management, engineering, and security to follow if they become aware of trespasser(s) attempting to make unauthorized access to such areas. Each player should know their role and be ready to assist law enforcement in safely removing and/or detaining the offenders. Being prepared for such situations can greatly increase the safety of a facility and greatly reduce its liability for potential loss.

by Nicole E. Torres: VP of Talent Development

If you want to find training gaps, stop looking at the training calendar and start looking at the mistakes. Many leaders agreed with the idea but asked the next question.

How do you actually identify training gaps in a security operation?

Not assumptions. Not guesswork. Real gaps.

In most security programs, training gaps hide in plain sight. They are usually misclassified as performance issues, personality conflicts, or “that officer just needs more experience.”

In reality, they are signals.

The key is knowing where to look.

1. Start With Operational Friction

Training gaps rarely appear as major failures. They show up as friction.

Look for things like:

When the same type of issue appears across multiple people, it is almost never an individual problem. It is a training problem.

Operations will always reveal what training missed.

2. Let Supervisors Surface the Gaps

Your supervisors see the gaps first. They are the ones fixing them in real time.

Ask them one question each week:

“What did you have to correct this week that should have been done right the first time?”

You will quickly hear patterns:

Those answers are far more valuable than guessing what training people “might need.”

3. Use Post-Incident Debriefs as Learning Tools

After incidents, most organizations focus on what went wrong.

High-performing security teams focus on what was unclear.

Run short post-incident debriefs and ask officers or analysts questions like:

Uncertainty almost always reveals a training gap.

A Quick Example

A supervisor once noticed three officers handle nearly identical access control disputes three different ways. None of the responses were unsafe, but all were inconsistent.

The problem was not discipline. The problem was clarity.

One short refresher on escalation authority solved the issue across the shift.

Sometimes the gap is not skill. It is shared understanding.

Training Should Follow the Work

The most effective training programs do not guess what people need.

They study the work.

They look at incident patterns, supervisor corrections, and operational friction. Then they build training directly from those observations.

Security operations are constantly teaching you where the gaps are.

The real question is whether leaders are paying attention.

 

I was speaking to a longtime client and customer last week about business in the current climate. We were discussing how we had never seen the geopolitical environment so unsettled. I repeated a line to him that I’ve been using often of late. “I could use a little less job security.”

The fact is that in tumultuous times like these, qualified private security services are so in-demand that the real challenge is simply keeping up. I am fortunate to work with a truly skilled and exceptional set of operators and trainers, yet we are all stretched incredibly thin. In many ways, even grizzled veterans like me have not seen a sustained demand such as this in our careers.

A literal example: as I sat down to type this brief essay, I received two separate requests for active threat/active shooter training and education sessions within a six-minute span. That tempo is absolutely commonplace these days.

The fact is that violent crime is down across the United States and has been trending that direction for at least three years. But for many people it doesn’t feel as though it is safer – and those perceptions should not be dismissed by security professionals. Rather, we should be engaging in that conversation, determining what factors or observations are causing a sense of unease.

Widespread deployments of masked and heavily armed federal immigration agents into American cities are ongoing and fill our computer and television screens nightly. Protests and demonstrations in response are also ongoing and appear to be getting more widespread. Media outlets seem all too eager to drum up reports of unrest or criminality – especially if a celebrity is involved or rating are involved. These conflicting facts and statuses leave public perceptions torn. Our role as security professionals is thus truly two-fold at this point: to provide a safer and more secure environment and to empower all our stakeholders to make them feel more at ease. In fact, one of the most valuable things we can bring to the table right now is teaching others to act as force multipliers for our collective safety. We must be the voice of reason.

This means educating non-security folks to be aware of their surroundings, to be cognizant of what is normal behavior and what is not, to know how and to whom suspicious activity should be reported – all without becoming paranoid. The fact is that given the multi-faceted and rapidly evolving challenges facing security professionals, we need all the help we can get. Extra sets of trained eyes and ears would be a gamechanger in the current muddled threat environment. If the limited number of law enforcement and security personnel out there can be reliably pointed in the right direction to deter, prevent, or rapidly respond to genuine issue of safety, everyone will be both at legitimately lower risk and feel at lower risk. It is a fine line to walk, to be sure. Yet the longest journey begins with but a single step. Time to lace up those boots.