Trends and Issues in Corporate Security Practice and Regulation in Australia

Abstract

There is no longer any doubt that good in-house security is of great value to every corporation in Australian business life. The growing importance of security preparedness has been influenced by at least four factors. The first is that there continues to be a worldwide trend away from reliance on public police in the face of threat. Instead, corporations are more likely to look to ‘self-protection’ (van Steden and Sarre, 2007; Sarre and Prenzler, 2009) or what has been referred to by Dutch criminologist Jan van Dijk (2008: 140) as ‘responsive securitization.’ The second is the increased security standards required by the law for insurance purposes. Moreover it is axiomatic that poor security increases a corporation’s legal liability and exposes it to other vulnerabilities such as the public opprobrium that attaches to the death of, or injury to, a worker (Sarre, 2008). Thirdly, there are now rigorous workplace safety legislative demands on all corporations that, if not adhered to, may lead to prosecutions. Fourthly, there have been improvements in the scope and reach of what is referred to as the ‘science of security’ and the hardware and software that are its crucial components. Finally, these security technologies are nowadays affordable, as are the wages of the officers who deploy and monitor them (Borodzicz and Gibson, 2006; Giever, 2007).