CASE STUDY ON INDUSTRIAL SECURITY

- S. BALAMURUGAN
(Ex. Dy. Commandant, CRPF),
                                                                          Manager (Protocol & Security),
Reserve Bank of India,
Chandigarh – 160017.

As you appreciate, the word ‘Security’ came from the Latin word ‘Securus’ meaning “being free from worry or tension”. Security can thus be enumerated as an activity or group of activities through which a person or an organization can remain free from tension. Recent era faces waves of tensions both on the personal as well as on the group front owing to ‘n’ number of reasons, resulting in the mounting importance of Security in all the spheres including ‘industrial sector’- that which enjoys the lion’s share, as far as application of Security is concerned in all developing nations including India.

On the whole, Security of industrial sector assumes multifarious role because of the existence of multi-faceted industries like IT industry, Banking industry, Automobile industry, Hotel industry etc. Industrial Security can thus be defined as that portion of internal security which refers to the protection of industrial installations, resources, utilities, materials, and classified information essential to protection from loss or damage.

Since case study is a careful study of a social unit (as a corporation or division within a corporation) in order to determine the factors that led to its success or failure (or) a detailed intensive study of a unit, such as a corporation or a corporate division, that stresses factors contributing to its success or failure, we can substantiate the present Industrial Security scenario in our country taking into account of the cases in IT and hotel sector in particular and other sectors like banking sectors in general.

In India, the industrial and agriculture sector together comprises of more than half of its GDP which amounts to 51.16% in 1998-99 and around 50.38% in 2008-09.Thus if one perceives on the National front, it is evident that the security of Industrial sector really safeguards our economy from any kind of economic drain owing to Loopholes in security. (More so the author is experienced personally both as a Paramilitary Officer and as a Security Officer in Vital installations like VSNL at AP, Centaur Hotel at J&K, Petroleum & Oil company at Assam, IT industry at Bangalore etc. and now in Banking industry).

Taking the cases of ‘Security in Tidel Park (IT company) at Chennai’, ‘Security in five star hotels like Hotel Ista (Amritsar), Hotel Taj (Chandigarh) and ‘Security in HSBC bank in Mumbai’ an analytical study has been conducted thereby depicting the following points (a) Need for Professionalism in Industrial Security Management. (b) Application of Professionalism with the aid of a Security Consultant (c) Carrying out Security Audit and moving from ‘Classical to Neo’ Security measures. (d) Organising, Staffing and Directing security operations. (e) Emergency Preparedness and Executive protection. (f) Need for an All India Body of Industrial Security Professionals in par with International Standards.

Security set up in the cases mentioned above: The prevailing security system in Tidel Park, Hotel Ista & Taj and that the foreign Bank has its own arrangements depending upon the topographical location of the industry, number of employees of the industry, types of visitors/guests visiting their office etc Let us take the case of Hotel Security wherein we can analyse it based on the above said methods. Hotel Ista at Amritsar is a five star hotel and its security system starts much before their physical security at the gate starts. The Hotel Security Managers are responsible for everything in their hotel. Their job involves making sure guests are happy with the service, recruiting the right staff, ensuring the hotel has all the supplies and equipment it needs, and hotel security systems. It is the hotel manager's job to keep the business running smoothly and profitably. This means making the hotel welcoming, comfortable and safe, and keeping a close eye on income and expenditure.

Selecting the right security firm is crucial and hoteliers may request tenders from numerous of firms before deciding upon a company that they are confident can fulfill their brief. Hotels are perhaps more vulnerable to security breaches than other establishments: multi-access points, free-flowing traffic and large numbers of staff all contribute to this vulnerability. Because of the high volumes of traffic it is imperative that hotel security systems have the ability to identify an unauthorised intruder as early as possible. The technology is now available to reduce that risk, with fully integrated and programmable systems that are able to screen all those entering and exiting, which means that security staff are able to set the hotel's system to monitor any selected area of the hotel. Thus Professionalism plays an important role in Hotel Security Management.

Now comes the application part and the need for Security consultant on the whole. Theft prevention has rendered security safes a requirement for any hotel. The needed security afforded by hotel safes completes existing Hotel security systems. Hotel security safes offer protection of personal documents, jewelry and irreplaceable items. Hotel safes are a major advantage to any guest. Throughout history there has been an enduring need to protect irreplaceable possessions from theft and the devastating effects of fire. With technological advances, today's safes have tempered steel walls with fire-retardant material interspersed within the walls, affording a deterrent to theft and fire. Thus Hotel Ista has Godrej Company as their sole consultant as far as the “safe” management is concerned.

Then comes the importance of Security auditing. It consists of risk evaluation and risk analysis of the industry by security experts which Hostel Ista does through professional security groups like Group-4 securitas.Through constant analysis of disaster and risk creating factors the security set up under the Chief Security Officer of Hotel Ista has constantly convinced the management about the need to spend money on security.

With Integrated Security Solutions in place, Hotel Ista has moved from classical type of physical security to that of Neo-Security System wherein all the security measures like vehicle checking to personal checking has been integrated in one particular place. The baggage screening has been done at the gate in a separate chamber away from public visibility. The boom barrier, the under vehicle surveillance system has been interlinked through electronic security system. The door frame metal detector along with the hand held metal detector has been fused to get the desired result of frisking at one point itself.

As far as Close circuit television is concerned, it has been placed in key points based on the recommendations of the security review committee that which takes place constantly. There is a sink of duties between the fire safety operations and that of the Physical security, as it is evident from the lift safety operators present in an alert condition round the clock. As hotel Ista, almost Hotel Taj at Chandigarh also has similar security set up and both of these industries do have a strong disaster management plan. They do have an emergency preparedness group consisting of private security guards and volunteers from their industry.

Hotel Ista (Amritsar) and Hotel Taj (Chandigarh) has a corps of well-trained dogs which they are using for guarding, sniffing out explosives and personal protection purposes. Apart from this, both these hotels adapt computer security techniques through highly motivated computer engineers.

Thus we can summarize that in the above said cases, physical barriers like perimeter wall, fencing, perimeter lighting, watch towers, patrolling by security personnel, electronic surveillance system and intruder alarm system has been used by these hotel industries in order to strengthen their security set up. From this case study one can visualize that the future of private security whether it is hotel industry or IT industry or banking industry etc. relies purely on adapting a professional outlook towards security. The slogan for the private security industry, through the case study analysis carried out here one can opine that, is “Professionalise or Perish”.

The geo-political factors, economic factors, emerging crime scenario factors makes it a necessity for the private security agencies ‘to pull up their socks’ which is evident in the case study depicted in the above paragraphs in connection with providing a sound security set up in industrial sector also. Other than the said factors, creation of common training and laboratory facilities, formulation of code of conduct & ethics plus frequent meetings to exchange experiences will surely fill up those gaps created in the deliverance of a hi-tech security by the private security agencies in the industrial sector.

Last but not the least, it is reiterated that the followings points may be imbibed in order to curtail the loopholes created in the security of industrial sector, which has come to light through the case study report as whole: Formulate standards for recruitment of security guards, formulate training frame work for security guards, adopt unified wage structure for the industry, determine the administrative costs, create common training centres and finally a gentleman’s agreement of not snatching ‘personnel & business’ from one another.

I would conclude this case study report on industrial security with a three worded mantra for the private security agencies that are looking forward with an ardent fire in the belly to achieve the unachievable of taking over the task wholesomely from the government security forces, that is, “PREPARE, PROFESSIONALISE AND PROGRESS”.

Email dated November 30, 2009 from Mr. Balamurgan.

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Preparing for the Next Wave

There is of course a certain semantic opportunism in the claim that there has been “no terror attack” in India for more than a year after 26/11. The South Asia Terrorism Portal database tells us that there have been at least 2,197 terrorism-related fatalities across the country through year 2009 (till December 28) – with the bulk of these coming from the Maoist conflict, accounting for 977; Manipur, 415; Assam 389; and Jammu & Kashmir, 373. Obviously, “terror attack” in this interpretation refers narrowly to Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorist attacks in major urban centres outside Jammu & Kashmir – an interpretation that provides a window into the minds of those who rule India, and their attitudes to what they regard as the country’s ‘periphery’. Nevertheless, there is cause to appreciate Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s candour in admitting that the absence of even such a ‘terror attack’ must be credited largely to “dame luck” rather than any extraordinary initiatives by India’s security establishment.

Such sagacity of perspective, however, does not encumber leaderships elsewhere in the country. In Mumbai, crucially – the location of the 26/11 attacks – the administration boasted of new protocols to respond to “a nuclear, chemical or biological attack”. The fact that this was considered a subject suitable for public mention indicates a degree of unfamiliarity with reality that is, indeed, astonishing. Protocols or no protocols, the truth is that no country in the world is actually or sufficiently ‘prepared’, in any meaningful sense, to thwart or to respond to a WMD (weapon of mass destruction) attack, and for Mumbai to see fit to brag about new and untested SOPs (standard operating procedures) in this context is certainly disingenuous. Worse, virtually every intelligence and security agency in the countries targeted by Islamist terrorists now concedes not only the possibility, but, indeed, the imminence of a future catastrophic attack, potentially involving WMD technologies. In some such countries certain systems for the containment of the impact of such an attack have been put in place. There is, however, at this juncture, a comprehensive vacuum in terms of any strategy of response to such an attack. The tremendous dispersal and decentralization of Islamist terrorist forces across the world make the design of an effective, targeted, response nigh impossible, exponentially multiplying the uncertainties that would necessarily result from a catastrophic or WMD attack anywhere in the free world.

There is, in India, little comprehension of the magnitude and the evolving nature of the threat of terrorism, and this takes much of the discourse on the subject into the realm of make-believe. Administrations continue to quibble over institutional forms – a bifurcated Home Ministry, a National Counter-terrorism Centre, National Intelligence Grids, and so forth – or to focus on incremental augmentations in capacity, with little reference to the fact that contemporary terrorism has engineered a generaltional shift in the fundamental nature of warfare, and this has disempowered even the most powerful states in the world. This, indeed, is the core lesson of the current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Notwithstanding the overwhelming technical, technological and resource superiority of US and coalition Forces in these theatres, victory remains elusive and most analysts would suggest that the US has, in fact, suffered significant reverses. It is useful to recall, crucially, that this pattern of irregular warfare, sometimes referred to as Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW), even without recourse to WMD technologies, “stands unique thus far as the only type of warfare that has defeated a superpower, and it has done so on two occasions” – in Vietnam and in Afghanistan. Contemporary terrorists use asymmetric warfare strategy and tactics within a protracted war model, and systematically elaborated over time, which seek to evade decisive engagements with a more powerful enemy, to gradually erode the political will of the enemy, rather than to control or administer territory. The essence of this method is ‘disruptive dominance’, the capacity to ensure that the stronger side – the state and its agencies – is unable to exercise the minimal functions of governance and the protection of life and property over the jurisdictions it controls. The objective is not to defeat the enemy militarily, but “to convince the enemy’s political decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit.” The increasingly importunate advocacy within the Indian policy establishment, of the necessity of a ‘compromise’ on Kashmir and a ‘negotiated solution’ with Pakistan, is an index of the degree to which this objective has already been consolidated.

With rare exception, India’s strategic and policy establishment continues to prepare to counter nothing more than the last terrorist attack, substantially oblivious of the continuous process of reinvention that terrorists are engaged in. Islamist terrorist ideologues and leaders, for instance, have been evolving theories of war that rely on the use of “the most deadly weapons possible”, and have created a new model aimed at drawing individuals and small groups into a ‘leaderless’ global jihad. One of the architects of this new way of warfare, Mustafa Sethmariam Nasar aka Abu Musab al-Suri, is known to have been involved in efforts in Afghanistan, during the Taliban regime, to train fighters in the use of “poisons and chemicals”. A 1,600 page document on ‘Global Islamic Resistance’, authored by Nasar, was long in circulation on the internet, and ideas such as these have been widely disseminated among Islamists and their handlers for years now.

While India continues to rely on ‘luck’ to come to terms with the fallout of a conventional attack by ten terrorists, equipped with small arms and grenades, it is useful to look at emerging projections of the potential of catastrophic terrorism, which we continue to refuse even to contemplate. Specifically, the greatest potential lies in the sphere of biological weapons which, commentators note, “have the capability to kill many more people than a nuclear attack.” One study, Dark Winter conducted in 2001, for instance, simulated a smallpox attack on three U.S. cities. In a period of 13 days, smallpox ‘spread’ to 25 states and 15 countries in several epidemiological waves, after which one-third of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who contracted the disease died. It was estimated that a fourth generation of the disease would leave 3 million infected and 1 million dead. The exercise was terminated at that time.

Terrorism is undergoing radical, generational shifts, and when this transition manifests itself in a new wave of catastrophic attacks, the resultant shocks could destroy almost all capacities of response within the target systems. Our conceptualization of counter-terrorism, however, remains trapped in the past, as we equivocate over the definition of terrorism and over ‘developmental’ and ‘political solutions’ to the global jihad. India’s security apparatus must prepare, not for the possible recurrence of another 26/11 – which currently exhausts our efforts and vision – but with the challenge of neutralizing the exponentially evolving threats of this new way of warfare.

Ajai Sahni,
Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management
The Pioneer, December 31, 2009

Email Dated December 31, 2009 from Mr. Dinesh Agrawal.

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