Young The Science and Technology of Counterterrorism

Measuring Physical and Electronic Security Risk
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-12-420061-6
Verlag: Elsevier Science & Techn.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 512 Seiten

Scientists with little or no background in security and security professionals with little or no background in science and technology often have difficulty communicating in order to implement the best counterterrorism strategies. The Science and Technology of Counterterrorism offers the necessary theoretical foundation to address real-world terrorism scenarios, effectively bridging the gap. It provides a powerful security assessment methodology, coupled with counterterrorism strategies that are applicable to all terrorism attack vectors. These include biological, chemical, radiological, electromagnetic, explosive, and electronic or cyber attacks. In addition to rigorous estimates of threat vulnerabilities and the effectiveness of risk mitigation, it provides meaningful terrorism risk metrics. The Science and Technology of Counterterrorism teaches the reader how to think about terrorism risk, and evaluates terrorism scenarios and counterterrorism technologies with sophistication punctuated by humor. Both students and security professionals will significantly benefit from the risk assessment methodologies and guidance on appropriate counterterrorism measures contained within this book. - Offers a simple but effective analytic framework to assess counterterrorism risk and realistic measures to address threats - Provides the essential scientific principles and tools required for this analysis - Explores the increasingly important relationship between physical and electronic risk in meaningful technical detail - Evaluates technical security systems to illustrate specific risks using concrete examples

Carl S. Young is a recognized subject matter expert in information and physical security risk management. He is currently a Managing Director and the Chief Security Officer at Stroz Friedberg, an international security risk consulting firm. He is the former Global Head of Physical Security Technology at Goldman Sachs as well as a former Senior Executive and Supervisory Special Agent at the FBI. He was also a consultant to the JASON Defense Advisory Group. Mr. Young is the author of Metrics and Methods for Security Risk Management (Syngress, 2010), and The Science and Technology of Counterterrorism (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2014) as well as numerous journal publications. In 1997 he was awarded the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) James R. Killian Award by the White House for significant individual contributions to U.S. national security. Mr. Young received undergraduate and graduate degrees in mathematics and physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Young, Carl

Leseproben

Chapter 1 Terrorism Threats, Risk, and Risk Assessments
1.1 Introduction: Decisions and Risk
Risk management has an image problem. There seems to be a never-ending stream of headlines about some corporate misstep resulting in billions of dollars in losses that is blamed on poor risk management. We typically only hear about the significant transgressions since big losses and major tragedies make news. The fact is that every financial transaction with a buyer and a seller has a winner and a loser. Therefore, gains and losses are happening all the time. Risk management is presumably at work with little notice until an issue becomes public. Significant losses often point to a disregard for existing risk management processes rather than flaws in the process itself. So it would seem that risk management is not fundamentally flawed. Rather, it is often selectively applied or intentionally disregarded. It is also important to appreciate that the tolerance for risk is not constant across professions, and this contributes to an imbalance in expectations on performance. In some fields of endeavor, the tolerance for risk is thankfully quite low. Few people would willingly fly on an airline whose risk management efforts resulted in a 70 percent success rate. Similar statistical expectations exist for other professionals such as surgeons, electricians, riggers, and plumbers. Most people would not be very happy if they had a 70 percent chance of a functional toilet following a visit by the plumber. On the other hand, the manager of a major league baseball team would be handsomely rewarded for a 70 percent winning percentage. The services of a major league hitter with a mere 30 percent success rate would be even more valued, and no doubt rewarded in kind. Maybe the real lesson here is to carefully choose your profession...and your plumber. There is a tacit assumption that winning at the professional level in baseball is inherently more difficult than plumbing. Note this says nothing about the relative importance of a plumber versus a baseball manager. This likely depends on the status of one’s bathroom at the time the question is posed. Society’s tolerance or intolerance for varying levels of risk management is based on expectations informed by statistical norms. These expectations will change as these statistics evolve and a new mean and standard deviation for performance emerge over time. Usually this is a slow process. A precipitous change in performance statistics for a large population is a strong indicator that some external influence is at work. For example, during the baseball steroid era (approximately from 1998 to 2005), the home run production from hitters increased dramatically across the major leagues. As if by magic, hitting 40 home runs in a season became a regular occurrence. Just as suddenly, hitters’ home run statistics and fan expectations reverted to the previous mean, probably as a consequence of stringent testing for performance-enhancing drugs. Statistical outliers in sports do occur, and they take their rightful place at the extreme tails of a normal distribution. For example, Bob Beamon shattered the world long jump record at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. In a single attempt he beat the existing record by 21.75 inches. Prior to this effort, the average improvement of the world record was 2.5 inches/jump. So Beamon’s singular effort in Mexico City was nearly nine times the average incremental improvement. However, this type of rare event is not the same as a wholesale shift in the performance of a large population over a short time period. Risk management is also more easily measured in some professions than others. Fortunately or not, this ease of measurement enhances the intensity of the public spotlight. For example, if planes crash, large numbers of people die in surgery at a hospital, or the Yankees lose to the Red Sox and vice versa (the latter is a more likely outcome), a number of people will be upset. Performance statistics in certain industries are intensely reviewed, and outcomes are constantly compared among peer organizations. Decisions based on risk management are central to our personal and professional lives. In fact, each and every decision we make is a form of risk management. This is because every decision, no matter how trivial, boils down to a choice between outcomes with varying effects on our lives. Therefore, each outcome carries risk in the broadest sense of the word. This process applies to any issue, whether it is deciding between green beans and carrots for dinner, swinging at a pitch or not, selecting Harvard or Yale for college, or choosing between Betty and Barbara as a spouse. The pros and cons of Betty versus Barbara notwithstanding, most decisions that require our attention are not very difficult. This probably has more to do with the types of decisions we face than our native decision-making ability. It is a good bet that nearly all readers of this book live in a stable environment and do not lack the necessities of life. Therefore, we are spared the burden of making choices with life-and-death consequences. It was not so long ago that life-and-death decisions were an everyday event for most humans on the planet. In some parts of the world this is likely still the case. One crude performance metric for the success of a nation might be the average rate of life-and-death decisions faced by its citizens. This facility for decision-making may be an evolutionary artifact of Homo sapiens and therefore indicative of our evolved thought process. Whatever the explanation, the fact is that risk is built into all our decisions. Whether decision-making is an innate human characteristic is a topic best suited for scientists who study such things. But it does not require a Ph.D. in zoology to appreciate that animals do not make decisions in the same way that humans do, if at all. Animals rely on instinct whereas humans leverage experience and are clearly influenced by factors like emotion and peer pressure. That said, the reader is referred to a fascinating article describing vervet monkeys who gave up their dislike of colored corn when they changed locations and observed other monkeys eating it.[1] Consider the daily struggles of your average jungle carnivore. Such animals are focused on survival, which in the near- and long-term translates to eating and procreating, respectively. They do not have the luxury of succumbing to trivial distractions from the Darwinian competition for survival that occurs up and down the food chain every day. The long-term prospects for a lioness would be dire if she was racked with indecision before each day’s hunt on the savanna. Such indulgences would adversely affect her as well as the entire pride. The lioness is programmed for survival, and food obtained through killing or scavenging is essential to her and her pride’s survival. The challenge for the lioness is particularly daunting, especially since she does not have a credit card at her disposal. Her pre-dining efforts entail searching, locating, stalking, chasing, catching, and killing her prey. Contrast this with the trivial effort required to order my quotidian dose of Asian takeout. Fortunately, evolution has served the lioness well, although the statistics show that success at hunting is not at all guaranteed.[2] The daily quest for food by humans is likely not too difficult for those individuals reading this book. This is clearly the case because if you have paid for this book then acquiring food was a lesser priority. If you received this book as a gift then I assume your kindly benefactor would have chosen to buy you a meal rather than a book notwithstanding this particular book’s intrinsic value. In fact, in New York City one merely has to pick up the phone, mumble a 10-digit number plus an expiration date, and food will magically appear at your doorstep. Death through overindulgence is a more likely outcome for the more fortunate members of our species. In contrast to most of our mammalian counterparts, humans have the simultaneous luxury and curse of distractions resulting from an avalanche of trivial exercises in risk management known as decisions. Most of these are resolved with relative ease despite the consequences of a bad choice. Consider the decisions required during a routine trip to the grocery store. Do I hop in the car or take public transportation? If I do take the car, should I exceed the speed limit or obey the law? Should I run the yellow light or sit through another frustrating cycle of signal changes? How about knocking down a cold beer (or two) versus drinking Diet Coke before departing? Should I snag a few uninspiring Brussels sprouts or indulge in a bag of artery-hardening potato chips? It is no wonder that ordering takeout seems so liberating. In any decision, choosing one option over another has consequences. Absent risk, all choices would essentially be equivalent, and you would end up staring at the grocery shelf in perpetuity. This actually happens to me when I am in the vegetable section since all possible outcomes seem equally bad. I attribute this to a personal failure in risk management rather than a penchant for unhealthy food. Humans often make the wrong decision on relatively significant issues. The silver lining is that these decisions appear to be having a limited impact on the survival of our species, although the final chapter has not been written on the effects of our current cycle of climate change. More impactful decisions such as which person to marry might make the point more convincingly. Although humans may be innate...