2020 November Edition 50 | Page 17

www . AmericanSecurityToday . com November 2020 Edition - 50

ability followed a similar pattern 83

percent of the leaders increased margins over that period while less than half of the industry laggards did so ."

Unfortunately , physical security stands out as a laggard in digital transformation — especially when compared to the modern cybersecurity best practices that I am used to .

Consider the findings of Accenture and Microsoft in their recent survey of physical security leaders :

“ We found that although security leaders see the opportunity to enhance risk management with digital capabilities , the industry is at various levels of maturity , and at worst is a decade behind . Respondents identified “ reactive threat management ” and “ intuition-led decision-making based on subjectivity ” as the two leading challenges facing physical security operations today . These challenges — operating reactively and improving decision-making — make it difficult to be proactive . This puts your people , brand and reputation at risk .”

It ’ s not surprising that physical security managers are worried about “ reactive threat management ” and “ intuition-led decisions ” when their security screening technology hasn ’ t fundamentally changed since the 1920s and is completely devoid of digital data .

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