Security professionals saw 9/11/01 as a tragedy and a wake-up call. My own security practice within a global investigative and security consultancy at the time experienced a huge, unprecedented spike in business and in publicity. From relative obscurity, I found myself having back-to-back appointments scheduled with the media by my president’s secretary because no one else in the office could speak to the larger issues of enterprise security. Yet, just getting more security business was not enough. By the end of the year, I had decided to give notice and began a migration back to the public sector by first joining a contractor for the State Department which was working exclusively on anti-terrorism and Homeland Security projects. On facing my resignation, my company president told me, “If it’s just about money, that’s easy to solve.” It wasn’t, however.
Nor, almost seven years later, is it now. September 11, 2001 fired the irreversible salvo in the Long War of throw-back barbarism against what passes for civilization and modern life. At the time, it was not only professional guardians who heard the call to action. American flags sold out of every store and waved jauntily on what looked like every other car. Military recruiters saw unprecedented lines of volunteers. A wounded population seemed mobilized and missionized, ready to take on any adversary with the kind of resolve and courage unseen since the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War. Security was also about to come into its own, with the Wall Street Journal predicting the advent of the CSO: the Chief Security Officer, who was predicted to become to every institution what the Chief Financial Officer or Chief Technology Officer had become – key executives with a place at the decision-making table of the enterprise.
Things never work out quite as predicted. Americans lose interest or even lose heart in any war lasting more than three or four years. We then begin to question not only our leaders, but also ourselves. We stop digging foxholes and lean back on our couches to psychoanalyze. And when our adversaries refuse to accommodate our proclivity for professional fault finding and apologizing and hand wringing, we look closer to home to blame more convenient, more cooperative villains: ourselves. We look for root causes, convinced that if we can understand it all, the sheer force of a good heart and open mind will wash away the hatred and end hostile action without more needless bloodshed. But we are wrong.
Security is a basic need we must address long before we arrive at the point of comfortable speculation about ultimate causes and motives. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I would say security comes between love and hunger. It is easy to give it top priority when taking enemy fire. But when further removed from direct attack, we all have a tendency to lower our guard – a tendency any shrewd adversary will count on and exploit. Now, more than ever, security is a matter of survival – for individual, for organization, for institution, for enterprise, for nation, even for way of life. We need to pay attention to safeguarding our people and assets, our operations and interests. We are now in a world where security may not always seem necessary, but where it is sometimes indispensable. And it is precisely in this context that we must ask ourselves:
“All secure?”
– Nick Catrantzos
Subscribe Now
AddThis
Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.