Physical Security Threats

We know that physical security is the primary and foremost important while we talk about security. There are many threats in physical security that one needs to understand and mitigate. Mitigating physical security threats, individuals or an organization needs to take certain unavoidable steps.

A few threats of physical security are much easy to mitigate than other. Using the access cards or bio-metric system to enter premises is easy to mitigate than that of natural disasters.

Mitigating physical security threats

There are many ways that help mitigating physical security threats at the workplace. A few mitigation plans are shared below.

Layout of premises
Access control
Protection from intruders
Redundancy to the utilities
Safe areas / safe passage

Let us talk about mentioned mitigation plans.

Layout of premises

For mitigating physical security threats, the layout of the premises is most important. Both people, as well as the material, can fall prey to threats if it is not planned in the right way. These threats may be weather, crimes, natural disasters or any other emergencies.

Access control

Access control is another important factor that helps in mitigating physical security threats. Access control help in granting access and identify employees, vendors, visitors, and strangers. It also helps in keeping control of access to premises by authorizing people only henceforth improving the safety of people and material.

Protection from intruders

When talking about intruders, an organization normally follow to keep and align security guards. Although the said protection is enough yet there are chances of human error maintaining the same. Placing of CCTV, motion sensors etc. if installed play an important role. Such devices capture the motion pictures and record video resulting in helping with a strong security measure.

Redundancy to the utilities

Many times some threats get ignored as these seem not to be threats. But such threats have a direct impact on business resulting in monitory as well as customer loss. Such threats are called generally because of not having redundancy to the utilities such as power grid etc.

Safe area / safe passage

While preparing the plan for mitigating physical security threats, safe area and safe passage play an important role. Safe area and safe passage are mainly required while dealing with disasters of larger intensity. These disasters may be natural like earth-quake, cyclone, flood etc. or man-made disasters like fire, terrorist attack etc.

Individual or an organization needs to be prepared and keep the following points in mind:

Premises must have open space for gathering in case there is a disaster.
Safety equipment’s like a water hose, water sprinklers, fire extinguishers etc. must be tested frequently and are functional
Frequent drills for disaster management

Conclusion

This discussion concludes that physical security is far the most important. Mitigating physical threats helps in bridging the gap if any towards safety and security. Mitigation plans need to understand, implement, measure and audit in a timely fashion to keep physical security intent.

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