Summer Crime Wave: Strategies for Enhanced Security

Jared Richardson:

All right. Welcome everybody. My name is Jared Richardson. I'm with LVT. And we are here to talk about summer crime trends, and actually we're going to dive back a little bit further to look at the data, but the goal here is really to give you some solid insights to help you evolve your security strategy based on what we have seen in 2025 and a little bit in 2024 as well. So again, my name is Jared Richardson with LVT. I'll be today's host and moderator. This session is being recorded and we will send you a link to the recording as soon as it is available.

And we definitely encourage questions for our panelists today. So I'd ask you to utilize the Q&A feature in the Zoom console. We're monitoring that and we'll get the questions over to you and over to our panelists for live Q&A as time allows. And first, let's dive into the panelists themselves, the real star of the show. I'm joined by a trio of VPs today. We'll start on my right with SVP of Business and Marketing Development in retail. This is Mr. Matt Kelley. Matt, how are you doing?

Matt Kelley:

Doing well.

Jared Richardson:

Excellent. To my left is AVP of Business and Marketing Development for the federal space, Brady Edwards.

Brady Edwards:

How are you doing, Jared?

Jared Richardson:

Good, good. And then joining us virtually, Chad Stevens. He's the AVP for Business and Marketing Development for our industrials team. So Chad, Brady, Matt, welcome. Thanks for joining us today. So let's dive straight into the data. And I think many of you may have seen the recent FBI crime report that's looking in crime statistics in 2024 compared to 2023. And we saw a little bit of some surprising news from this, violent crime down from the previous year by 4.5%, property crime down by 8.1%. So definitely some numbers that are some post-COVID recovery numbers that maybe continue from the trends of the previous year in 2023. And again, this is data coming from the FBI. What we really wanted to look at though was how are things going in 2025, what are we seeing so far this year?

And the Council on Criminal Justice has some pretty good data out just real recently looking at violent crime, property crime. And let's drill down to some of those specifics. So violent crime in homicides down 17% according to the Council on Criminal Justice. Shoplifting down 20%. And then when we go into some more property crime figures, again, homicides. And then I believe the other one was theft. So shoplifting down 12 and then burglaries down 19%. So I think some of these figures surprise a lot of the people in our communities and the folks that you talk to on a regular basis. First of all, we're going to do a little interactive piece, right? So I want everybody attending to just dive right in and give us your opinion too.

So we can go to the next slide and I can show you guys, if you can take out your mobile devices or whatever you want to do, scan the QR code, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this. We've compiled a short survey so that we can capture what's happening in the communities that you serve. Let us know what you're seeing, what the trends are that you guys are dealing with on the daily. We'll cover some of those responses a little bit later in this webinar. But I want to go back now as our audience takes that survey to dive into the FBI crime report. And let's start with Matt. Matt, I know that when you saw this report and we talked about it, you had some thoughts on the FBI data and kind of what you've heard based on what you're seeing from them.

Matt Kelley:

Yeah, I think that what I'm hearing from the people out in the community, people I talk to on a day-to-day basis doesn't necessarily align with what the reports say. And I think by and large, it's driven by the fact that oftentimes these are under-reported just because local law enforcement either can't respond, don't have the time to respond, there's apathy in the communities that these are happening in because of the lack of law enforcement response. And it's through no fault of law enforcement's. Their own fault, it's that they're under-resourced, they don't have enough headcount, they're spread too thin. So when things happen to the people out in the community and they know law enforcement either is going to be a severely delayed response or no response at all, they're oftentimes not going to report the crime that's happening.

Jared Richardson:

And we've seen that through what this concept of the dark figure of crime, right? We can pop the slides back up because I wanted to show you some of these challenges, right? We know that a certain percentage of crimes go unreported, to your point, Matt. So what we see here is according to the National Crime Victimization Survey that the FBI does reference in 2024, 41.5% of violent crimes do go unreported, 31.8% of property crimes typically are unreported. And also there's this challenge with consolidation of data like universal reporting data. And I know Brady, we've been talking about NIBRS data and this is what the FBI has moved to and is urging agencies to move to. And it's not always the easiest thing to get every agency across the United States that reports crime to be using the same system. So 75% of law enforcement agencies are now reporting into this new system, but there's definitely some challenges when it comes to the data there.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, that's a great point. So previously this reporting was done on an annual basis and now it's done on a monthly basis. So as you transition to a monthly basis, this is a bigger ask from our departments to go and report this data. So not only is there a learning curve as they take on this new process, but also it could just be resources as well as Matt touched on.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. And Chad, you, the customers that you speak with and the people that you deal with in your line of business are largely remote, managing largely remote sites and industrial sites. And there's just some curiosity there about how many of those are actually being recorded and reported.

Chad Stevens:

Yeah. And I think it's the challenge of any report is what is the data, what is the source? And a lot of these crimes frankly just don't get reported because especially in remote locations, like Brady said, law enforcement may have limited capability to respond or the victims of the crime often see no value. It's a time waste for them, so they just document for their own purposes and move on.

Jared Richardson:

I will say calling out the data when we see across the board numbers where property crime and violent crime are decreasing according to reported crime data. To me it's also maybe we take a minute to pat security professionals on the back and our LEO partners on the back, right? Maybe we are finding some patterns and trends and addressing those, adjusting those to maybe tackle a decrease in crime community-wide. Any thoughts on that?

Matt Kelley:

Yeah, I'm sure there's pockets where crime is decreasing because of public-private partnerships and driving those. And in areas where it is working, it does make a difference. But I think that's probably from my perspective less common than some of the other things we talked about.

Jared Richardson:

And then Brady, I don't know if you've already touched on this, but the frequency of reporting too, right? We've seen some recent changes in that where moving from annual to maybe something more frequent, that gives us a more accurate picture.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah. I mean, they're doing it monthly. I think the intention is it's going to be more accurate, but also it's certainly a process change and it's a bigger ask as to go and report the data versus an annual basis. So I think it's something that all departments are going to adjust to. I'll be very interested to see what the data looks like a couple years from now once this new process has settled in. But as of right now, I think the data, there's certainly a learning curve that goes along with data that it's probably not as accurate as it's going to be a couple years from now.

Jared Richardson:

I think it's easy to look at this overall crime data and it just to me strips away the individuality of the incidents that are happening, right? So any one single incident, whether it be something incredibly severe or even minor does and can impact one single business, right? And I know that that's a lot of what you guys are hearing and seeing from people in the front lines daily. So I'm just curious, when you talk to the security professionals that you're supporting out in the field, when there is an incident that happens, what does that mean for them?

Matt Kelley:

Yeah. I think the first thing is oftentimes these are just operators trying to keep the lights on, regardless of if it's a gas station, a C-store, retail environment, oil and gas, a manufacturer or refinery, it doesn't matter what the business is, those operators are just trying to keep the lights on. And so anything that we can do to help is greatly appreciated. But at the end of the day, they're there to generate profits, help support their local communities and look to law enforcement to help impact the events that are happening. And then law enforcement is actually looking back to those people in the community and saying, "What are you doing from a security standpoint to mitigate the activity that we're seeing?" Because they don't want to be the first call when an event happens.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. And we've seen some, especially when it comes to violent crime, we've seen some recent examples that have really had the ability to impact a business's reputation. I know that reputational value and protecting that is something, Brady, that you deal with quite a bit when it comes to the people in your field that you support.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, absolutely. Your security program credibility is a big thing. Everyone thinks your security program's running well, everything's good, and then one incident completely changes that perception. So usually in those situations, you've been trying to fight to get some additional physical security measures in place and you fight for budget and you can't get that budget, and then something happens, and immediately leadership comes to you and they're like, "What's the solution?" So the budget constraints go away, but you're now in a position where you're reacting to the incident.

So it's really not a good place to be. It's much easier when you're kind of in that proactive place. So incidents are a challenge. Within the Fed space right now, I know that our Fed customers are dealing with a lot of protest events and some pretty violent trespassing events. And so it's certainly a concern.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. And Chad, when we look at theft and property crime, especially in the industrial space, it may be one single reported instance of theft, but that can stack up and add up pretty quickly.

Chad Stevens:

Yeah. And if you want to pull up that slide about the security budget, it's one of my all-time favorite memes and builds really on what Brady was saying about you never really want to be in the spot where the first time you're responding to an incident is an actual incident because you don't have the muscle memory. But what comes with that is if you're prepared, you have potentially access to much more of a budget. I know this is a little bit tongue in cheek here, but if you're a security professional and this isn't funny to you, you're really lucky because you've never experienced the post-incident kind of what do we do now situation.

And Jared, the thing that I wanted to... My final thought here was you were talking about what could be influencing these numbers, and I do think there is something to explore in terms of the technology that was out there and the way that technologies are integrating together to bring information kind of unity that a lot of law enforcement agencies have a lot more powerful tools at their fingertips. So I think to Brady's point about let's see how this looks in two years, I think that the data could be significantly more unified and give us a better picture on these consolidated reporting tools.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah, that's a great point Chad. And I think a lot of our audience members may have been in a situation either recently or in the past where the security program that they oversee, the teams they oversee from a leadership standpoint has been seen as a cost center until something happens or until there's some sort of wake-up call or trends. So you mentioned proactivity before, right? We're talking about budgets, Chad. What are some things that you guys have seen either that you recommend or that you've heard from customers on how they're successfully justifying spend increases and budget increases maybe even ahead of an incident or event?

Matt Kelley:

Yeah, I think it comes down to communication and setting expectations with a broader group within an organization, especially taking cross-functional partners. When you're going on that journey to try to make a budget ask or put a strategy in place, they're always going to know what's in it for them. So if you have those answers ahead of time and maybe even start planting those seeds before those financial conversations happen, that helps you internally sell as a team, what is the vision for this strategy, how does it help impact the broader organization and not just one function within a business.

‍Brady Edwards:

Yeah, great point. Another aspect of that I think is really important is I think that all the different parts of the organization need to understand the risk. They need to understand the risk of not doing something. Bad actors are looking to expose vulnerabilities within our security program, so when we have risks that goes... We don't do anything about, and then that incident happens, what does that look like afterwards? What's the damage to reputation in our brand? All those types of things. So I think helping them understand the risk, the why we need to do something and that doing nothing isn't an option.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. Chad, what about you in your space?

Chad Stevens:

Yeah, I mean, I think all of that, 100% accurate. I think what it comes down to when you're trying to justify any project is where can I find synergies with other groups, right? And so to Matt's point about building your coalition, sometimes it's as easy as, for example, "Hey, I'm putting up this camera," super simple example, "It's going to provide this security function. We also think it can provide this operational function." And all of a sudden that investment becomes a far more favorable thing because you're extracting more value. And the more you can compound that value with your investment, the easier it is for your coalition to form, right? I see that happen a lot with security folks in the industrial space. They're finding very creative ways to justify those investments.

Jared Richardson:

So to tie in this all together, when we look at trends, reported trends, because leadership is going to see a report from the FBI or any other agency and they're going to see property crime down and violent crime down, and they're going to come to you and they're going to be like, "Well, why do we need to invest in something like this? Aren't things trending down?" I think there's something to be said about the importance of staying vigilant. So on that topic, I'm curious to hear from all three of you what's actually happening? What are the threats that are creating vulnerabilities that we need to continue to raise the alarm about?

Matt Kelley:

I think for me, the biggest thing is oftentimes in the asset protection, loss prevention world, historically it's been a set it and forget it mentality. You don't iterate on processes, improve them, improve the technology. It's, "Hey, I made this capital investment five years ago, it's not broken, it still serves the same purpose. I'm just going to continue to rely on that." And criminals aren't dumb. They're going to continue to evolve their tactics, their methods to break the system that you've put in place. So that's where I would want to be vigilant as a practitioner is continuing to on a year in and year out basis examine the strategies that I put in place in times past and ensure they're still going to be able to meet the needs of how the environment has evolved over time.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. And you call out criminals continuing trying to test and break, right? And we see one of the trends that we've always seen is threats and attacks becoming more and more and more sophisticated. And that's especially a concern in the Fed space.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, within the Fed space, everyone leading a security program in the Fed environment should have a good understanding of what their vulnerabilities are and if bad actors are looking to expose those vulnerabilities, right? So one of the things I always talk about would be complacency, right? Don't be complacent. Just working now and what you have in place, the traditional security solutions are working and you haven't had any events, doesn't mean that you don't need to reevaluate and continue to try to find better way of doing things, introducing technology solutions to your program that you haven't had previously. So I think that complacency is a constant battle and it's for many reasons, but it's certainly an enemy within when you're running your security program.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah, great. I want to revisit that in a second, because I got something interesting to bounce off of you in terms of complacency. Chad, when we're talking industrials, we're talking O&G like utilities and a lot of other use cases. What are some of the threats? What are the vulnerabilities that people in those teams are looking out for? What should they be looking out for?

Chad Stevens:

Yeah. And I think to build off Brady's point there, most of the large corporations that we do business with or are out there, they have a very well-developed threat intelligence program. And so when they see a report, it just becomes a piece of data that they bring into their threat intelligence processes so they can accurately and proactively describe the risks that we've been talking about. And so in the utility space, we're just seeing more and more, to Matt's point about criminals aren't stupid, what is the easiest place I can get myself into to cause whatever event to occur, I'm stealing something or I'm here to protest, right?

And so we see that constant testing and evolution and really theft-related, what is the easiest way I can make an easy buck? And also in today's world, where are the environmental threats that we can highlight and try to shine as bright a light on as humanly possible? And in the energy space, that is very rarely downtown metropolitan area, it's in the middle of nowhere, and it is really hard to figure out what you're going to do there because you probably don't have the traditional systems out there that you might have at a large or metropolitan kind of environment.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. And this isn't just a summer issue because one of the things that we talked about that's driving complacency maybe is nuisance alarms, right? This concept of nuisance alarms. So I kind of want to start there. What are the things generating the most nuisance alarms? What's your advice to security practitioners when it comes to finding those, routing those out and finding solutions for those?

Matt Kelley:

I mean, I think from a nuisance alarm, these false alarms, it could be for a number of different things. If you're talking about motion-based alarms, it could be a bird flying across the field of view. It could be a leaf that's constantly setting off an alarm. It could be an employee that should be there that's setting off the alarm. I think that's where the industry is starting to move more and more towards technology to be able to filter out the noise and actually deliver actionable events to the end user to make sure that they're focused on the right things at the right times.

Because with those false alarms comes the complacency that Brady had talked about where you're just going to click a button to make it go away and you can move to the next queue. Because oftentimes the operators that are handling those inbound alarms are gauged on how quickly they can move through an event. So if they're incentivized to move through the events as fast as they can and they just glance at a camera screen or whatever it is and click through it, then that's what they're going to do. So it's an alignment of incentives, how you're measuring success and what good looks like, but then also leveraging AI technology, for example, to filter out the noise to actually deliver those actionable events so they can triage those in real time.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, that's great point. I mean, the reality is these types of systems full of nuisance alarms create significant risk for an organization. When you go walk into an SOC and there's nuisance alarms just scrolling down the screen and the operators don't know what those are, that's a huge issue. So you have to have process and procedures in place so that your system doesn't get to that state, but when it gets to that state, it becomes very difficult to fix. So when you get a new system, get in full and acceptance test, making sure that system's configured correctly from day one, and then testing that system on a regular basis to make sure it's still operating as it's supposed to.

Don't make assumptions that things are working just because there's not nuisance alarms. You'll be surprised what you find when you have that test. So I think those are really important things to remember. People install these systems, they're operating fine for years, and they don't think there's any issues. They don't see any nuisance alarms, which rarely is the case, but you have to get out there and test your systems and make sure they're operating correctly, and you have to have a mechanism in place to be able to have agreements in place and make sure that if you find a nuisance alarm, you get immediately corrected so those don't continue to grow.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. Chad, I see you shaking your head over there.

Chad Stevens:

Yeah, I mean, I think what I keep thinking about is it's also really, really hard when you're a security professional and thinking about implementing a new technology to really understand what you're getting and signing up for until it gets turned on for you, and then all of a sudden you are expecting this kind of set it and forget it or potentially seamless experience. And the first thing that happens is you get 30,000 door contact alarms or something, and then you're thinking about, "Okay, back to what I learned in integration days." Like, "Okay, what is the day two support for this thing? And who do I go to if I thought I was properly trained or equipped and now I'm not?"

And so it's this evolving relationship and partnership between the stakeholders that are there to make your implementation successful. And I think a lot of people don't understand that false alarm problem or any of a number of others that come from thinking you're prepared and everyone is always going to find surprises, but trying to do your best to get as dialed in on what do I need to really support this thing when it's mine and only mine.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. You mentioned testing, Chad, you talked about it a little bit as well. Let's talk about how often, what's the right frequency? And I know in some industries there's some requirements around this, but Brady is someone that has led these teams, executed these tests before. What is your recommendation, professional recommendation?

Brady Edwards:

I'd say at a minimum annually you should do a full test of your systems. I mean, depending on the size of your site, I mean, this could take a couple days, this could take a week, but it's important you set aside that time and you do, like Chad talked about, the door contacts. You may not realize there's a door contact that's not operational until you go to hold open that door on one of your perimeter the doors, you don't get an alarm. That's an issue, right? When these nuisance alarms are on these systems, they're not able to see a real event. So it's really important to go out there and test those systems, make sure they're fully operational. But I would say in general, Matt and Chad may disagree, but I would say at a minimum annually is at least a good starting point.

Jared Richardson:

Well, now's your chance to fight him, Matt. I mean, do you agree? Do you disagree?

Matt Kelley:

Yeah, I would say at a minimum annually, but if it's around an event, so in the retail environment, oftentimes stores will close down for Thanksgiving, the stores will close down for Christmas, and those are the only two days of the year that they go dark. So if you're going to do that, you have to have enough runway depending on how many locations you're doing the testing at to then go back and whatever's broken, give your vendors, so this is where the partnership comes in, give your vendors time to be able to go fix what's broken in whatever amount of stores.

So that's where planning comes into play is to be able to make sure that everything's in working order if closing is around an event and there's not going to be anybody on site. But if it's just a standard, "Hey, I'm pressure testing the systems," I mean, you probably want to do it in chunks, maybe on a quarterly basis, not your entire fleet of locations, but at a minimum, everything needs to get checked at least once a year.

‍Brady Edwards:

He didn't disagree with me. That was good.

Jared Richardson:

I know. I thought he would, right?

Matt Kelley:

I faked it. I though-

Jared Richardson:

You gave him one. All right, Chad, what about you, agree or disagree? What's your stance here, especially for customers in industrial?

Chad Stevens:

I'm going to say neither agree nor disagree. I think it depends. I think you have to look at risk, right? It depends on what you're doing. If you're a small business or a very risk tolerant business, you may say, "We're going to run this till failure." If you're a sophisticated corporation that has a different appetite for risk, you need to look at individual components and say, "That's a quarterly thing, that's a weekly thing." But in reality, you're usually testing the efficacy of technical security programs or physical security programs periodically throughout the year because it just happens. I think what matters is that you take credit for what you do and document it. But yeah, if you're going beyond annual, I would say you probably have to at least explain why and if there's a valid reason for that, probably fine.

Jared Richardson:

I think another thing too to talk about too is now, hey, we're hanging on in the last few days of summer. Kids are back in school, right? Our vacations are wrapping up. We're going to be back in the office until the holidays, right? Some of us don't get time off, we just continue to work. But I think as the workforce returns or as you bring on new employees, doing these tests and also the education piece is huge, right? So what are some of the dos and don'ts of educating your employees and your workforce around the finer points of responding to some of these security trends?

Matt Kelley:

I would say don't overcomplicate it. Make it simple for them to understand, make it simple for them to execute, and then continuing education on that process to reinforce what you think they should have learned in their onboarding process or as they've been onboarded, but simplicity is key and then drilling it into them so it's muscle memory on how and when they should be responding to these types of events.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, I agree. That goes back to that whole culture of security, right? I think it's important that there's accountability that your employees know that in the summertime just because it's hot in the warehouse that they're working in, that they don't prop open a perimeter door. One, that's creating an alarm on the system or should be, two, it's not good security practice, right? At the end of the day, if they leave and that door gets left open, it's a vulnerability that can be exposed by a bad actor.

Another part of this, I think I've seen it where we're getting nuisance alarm on a system and you make a phone call and you find out, "Well, so-and-so hasn't been trained on how to disarm the intrusion detection system." So every day they're walking in the building, they're walking around, they're setting off all the motion alarms, and you're getting all these alarms. Well, they're not real alarms, but why has that person not been trained on how to properly arm and disarm the IDS? So it seems like simple things, but those go a long ways in just making sure that you don't get those types of events.

Jared Richardson:

Great. Yeah. Let's push through. I do want to touch on something real quick too. I know that Brady, you talked it, we've talked a lot about detection so far in this webinar, and then now there's these concepts of deter and how do we take it a step forward in building cases and working to prosecute? So as people do these pressure tests, as they educate employees, as they reevaluate these systems, let's talk about the power of deterrence. What are some things that you find when you go out to sites and you're looking at traditional or historical security infrastructure? Are they doing the job at deterrence?

Brady Edwards:

Well, the reality is you put up a perimeter fence with razor wire on top, that's going to deter. I think there's a perception that more traditional solutions deter, mobile vehicle patrol, traditional video surveillance. I've seen incidents where bad actors came up and graffitied a logo of the building right below the camera. It didn't deter them. So I think that we need to find solutions that offer, they deter, they detect, they offer multiple benefits to our security strategy. It makes people uncomfortable to move towards that technology and away from the more traditional solutions. But I think it's really important as we move forward with bad actors are getting more creative, they're getting better at what they do.

Jared Richardson:

Matt, you talked a little bit about AI enabling security operators to be more efficient and maybe focusing on things that are more critical instead of just checking off some items on a screen. I'm just curious from a technology standpoint, where are you seeing the trends when it comes to investing in new systems?

‍Matt Kelley:

Yeah, when we talk about investment, how I talk about with the customers is now, "How are you future-proofing?" Because technology is evolving at such a rapid pace now. What you're putting in place now is going to be obsolete in two years from now. And if you're making capital investments in technology, you're going to be hard pressed to go get budget for a new project if depreciation schedule is over a five-year time period and you're in year two and saying, "Well, this technology's obsolete now." So that's how I'm thinking about it with our customers is, "How are you thinking about the future? How are you setting yourselves up to be able to adapt to what's to come from a technology standpoint?" Because it's evolving at such a rapid rate that if you aren't being more forward thinking than what's right in front of you, then you're going to be way far behind in the near term.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, just jogging my memory on something that he said that I want to touch on. Really from the moment a system's installed, you need to be planning for its end of life. A lot of times you install a system, you think it's going to last forever, you hear that. Well, it's not going to last 20 years. Sometimes people run systems that long, but the end of life of the system should be planned for and built into a capital strategy from the moment it's installed. It's really important.

Jared Richardson:

Chad, yeah, anything to add here?

‍Chad Stevens:

Yeah, I mean, the only thing I'd add is I think it also depends on what kind of facility you're talking about. And I would say a traditional system, I don't think any of us would disagree that if you go interior into say an office building, the fundamental concepts for how you protect that, we would all kind of agree about access control at the doors and video to see who's coming and going at primary access control points. I think we have that pretty well baked. We can always get better. What I see happening is what we consider to be the perimeter expanse and when we start to get outdoors and then we say, "Oh, what about the back loading area?"

And where traditional systems work, but get very expensive is when you've got to run infrastructure somewhere real far. And then the problems about future-proofing get even more complicated because you're not only future-proofing against the technology changing, but you can't future-proof with a traditional hard wire system for it just moving, right? And so you might trench 100 yards into a parking lot to put up a camera and then it does its job. There's nothing wrong with it, but that's its job, it can't change. And so I think that's an important... I think we're starting to see customers coming around to that concept that if I can be more flexible, that provides me a ton of value.

Matt Kelley:

I really like what you said about expanding the perimeter, right? So to the extent you can move the perimeter well beyond the physical location like the four walls of a building out beyond that, that gives you more of a fighting chance to be able to detect a bad actor as they're coming on site. And you can build in processes to be prepared for in the eventuality that he actually gets to the building. But extending that perimeter well beyond just the four walls of the building really gives you that fighting chance.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah, I mean maybe give us an example of where that would work in maybe you've seen an incident, you've seen it play out via recordings, right? Where would that benefit people?

Matt Kelley:

Yeah. I mean, I think historically that's really what the intent of fencing was supposed to do, but it's easily defeatable and it's just not as effective as it once was unless you have razor wire on it, but then you can just cut through it. But now it's more about placing sensors well beyond the perimeter so that you have the eyes and ears and can respond and get a heads up that activity is happening. And then you can with the use of video monitoring or that public-private sector engagement that we talked about previously drive some sort of action in an automated fashion with the use of technology well beyond the four walls of the building.

Chad Stevens:

Jared, I can give you one. So think about a refinery, that's an easy example. In many cases, those refineries are 100 years old, right? They were built at a time when there was nothing around them. And so the concept of security was there, but it was different, right? And then 100 years later now we have a completely different threat environment. We have a completely different world and the infrastructure just isn't in place because there was never a thought of saying, "Hey, employee parking lot holds 1,000 people and now we're having problems with, whatever, catalytic converter theft or any incident." And the question always becomes, "Well, what can we do?"

And so you can send a guard patrol out there, you can post a guard there, but it's very expensive, right? You need cameras. Cameras can totally solve this problem, including the ones that you can hardwire out there. Again, it's just an expensive problem. So that future-proofing discussion is really about your risks for your site and what infrastructure you have, because a lot of the time using that existing infrastructure is the right answer if you have it, but there's plenty of times when it's not.

‍Jared Richardson:

I think we're on this concept of proactive versus reactive, right? So Chad, you talk about looking at investments that allow you to be flexible where you used to be rigid, right? So I'm just curious, what are some of these other... It could be, could be a product, it could be a methodology. What are some things that are driving this more proactive approach to physical security?

Chad Stevens:

I'd say it's data. I think if you look at the timeline of any incident, there's always things that you could have potentially done that would've alerted you sooner, and those exist today. But I think the more you can get ahead of that kind of left of the bang as we call it in terms of proactive response, I mean, that's what everyone's looking for. It's just finding a meaningful and cost-effective solution, right? That's kind of the nirvana that we're all trying to find, I think.

Matt Kelley:

Yeah, I think looking at those leading indicators about what typically happens before an event or during an event, because really what you're trying to do historically, from a root cause standpoint, we just treat the symptoms, right? And now we're moving more towards with, the use of technology, being able to actually treat root cause of what's happening and using data to get to that decision, a yes or no decision much faster, rather than just having gut or intuition or relying on anecdotal information is helping customers and businesses arrive to a yes or a strategy much faster than they have historically.

‍Jared Richardson:

We have some results coming in on the survey that we asked people to talk about with crime. We're going to prepare those to show on the screen here. I want to remind everybody if you have a question for our panelists, utilize the Q&A in Zoom and we'll make sure to get to those live during the webinar. So those two things real quickly, I wanted to share, because I think this is an interesting perspective when we poll this audience, right? Not necessarily looking at what's being reported, let's talk to the security practitioners that have their boots on the ground and let's just see some of those results.

I mean, 17% of individuals feel that crime is about the same. 50% of respondents to the survey say that crime is slightly higher than it has been. And more than a third of the audience or about a third of the audience saying that crime is much higher. So I think what Matt, to your point early on when we talked about the data, this is a little bit of validation for what you were thinking there. Does this surprise you? Are you aligned with this?

Matt Kelley:

No, it's not. I think the interesting thing is 50%, just think about what their baseline is, right? So it's already super high coming out of COVID. And if even incrementally higher is really high, really impactful, impacts the communities that these folks are operating in. And then 33%, that still, statistically speaking, is a high number, especially when we talk, again, about where the baseline of where we started from.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah. I think another interesting thing about data is most likely everyone that's taking this poll is basing it off of incidents they are seeing occur at their facilities or in their security program. So they're basing off real-world events they're dealing with. It's not just how they're feeling about when they're walking down Downtown Chicago. This was based on the things that they're dealing with. So I think that it's really, really interesting data based on the data we talked about earlier.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah. Chad, and how is this just kind of aligning with what you're seeing and hearing?

Chad Stevens:

Yeah, I mean, this is more aligned with what we generally see, but I'm a scientist at heart, right? I have bias because it's my job to interact with people who are having security problems, but I think this feels kind of closer to what I would've expected. Honestly, I think if you look broader, you would see that it's probably closer to the middle, but maybe to slightly more crime. But the reality is that your reality is the only one that matters when you're trying to manage risk, right? So understanding that you as a security professional need to have an understanding of the threats and what risks those create is what really matters. And so being prepared with your data on trends is how you build your security program appropriately.

‍Jared Richardson:

Yeah. I want to go back to the coin jar meme that we showed earlier because people in the chat were loving this, but this gets me into kind of the next category, right? Okay, so say you're now dealing with the jar on the right, okay? It's full of coins. So where do you spend, where do you focus spend? What do you start investing in? What do you start looking in? How do you optimize security spend? So now that we have this, how do we be good caretakers of this budget, but how do we also be forward-thinking and future-proofing?

Matt Kelley:

I think there's a lot of different ways you could go with that question. First, it's assessing risk across the entire portfolio of business you manage from a location standpoint, obviously you're going to allocate resources to the highest tiers of risk because that's where you're going to get the most benefit financially for your organization. But then you need to really take a hard look at your vendor partners. You've got vendor partners, you've got solution providers, and then you've got strategic partners. You want to invest in those strategic partners because they're going to be the ones that are bringing you what's new, what's the latest and greatest.

But then oftentimes they're probably going to be more multifaceted in the problems they solve or more willing to help solve multiple problems rather than just somebody who says, "All right, you have a problem. I solve problem A and that's the only thing I can solve." So that's where you need to be very mindful about people you're taking on as vendors. Are they really a solution provider, a vendor or a strategic partner?

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think to Matt's point, finding strategic partners that are willing to challenge your traditional way of thinking about your security program and they can be truly that partner that'll help you to get better. When these types of events happen, the jar on the right, it is funny, but having dealt with this exact scenario before, the money's available, but the solution sometimes is not. There's no easy button, right? So sometimes these take a lot of time. So you need solutions that'll rapidly be able to fix this issue, correct this issue for you, lower your risk, and maybe it's a step to what the permanent solution is.

But when these scenarios come, people want answers and they want solutions fast and the easy button's hard to find sometimes. So systems that don't touch your infrastructure, you can avoid having to deal with your cybersecurity team. They can stand on their own, they're not going to require power. Those are the types of solutions and then obviously introducing AI component to that and automating as much of this stuff as you possibly can. That's where I would be focused.

‍Chad Stevens:

Yeah. I mean, I just want to build off of Brady's point. It's really the peril of being unprepared, right? You have a problem. If you haven't done a whiteboard or some sort of event on that so you're ready, then you're caught flatfooted without a plan. And without a plan, you start to scramble, right? And obviously those quickly executed plans sometimes create more problems than they solve, right? So I just want to go back to the preparation. If you talk to a mature security organization, they're going to be able to very quickly tell you what they have, what could be better. And so when an incident comes, it's an opportunity to improve and not just throw something in and two years later you're like, "Why do we have this? What does this thing do again?" Or it's not supported or all of the things that can potentially happen.

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, I was going to say good point. I was just going to touch on more thing. Sometimes our vendor relationships become more transactional. "We need this, I'm going to give you this." There's not a lot of strategy put around it. That's why going back to Matt's point, when I talked about those strategic partners that are really going to challenge us and they're going to be more of that consultant to our security program, those are the types of partners you want to be looking for.

Jared Richardson:

We got a question from one of the attendees. So how would you sustain the jar on the right? How do you tell the story to continue investment in your security program?

Matt Kelley:

I think that it's all about, again, going back to the point Chad made, data. If you're continuing to show value with the solutions and strategies you've put in place and can speak to that when you're meeting with your leadership teams or your finance teams, that's going back to the point I made of it's not a set it and forget it program. Nothing should be. Iterate on the process, improve the process, improve the technology, improve the partnerships to be able to get good, rich, robust datasets, show the value, make sure that everybody's continually aligned on what the value of the solutions are that you're putting in place and showing that value over time and not just a once a year exercise.

Jared Richardson:

All right. So let's say you're faced with the reality of the situation on the left where you don't have a whole lot to spend, right? Cap dollars are hard to come by. There's a huge competition for dollars within the business. What are the essentials? What do you absolutely continuing to spend on, what do you maybe look to invest in when you've got the dollars?

Brady Edwards:

Yeah, again, I'll go back to what I touched on earlier, the solutions are going to offer multiple benefits to your security strategy. Those are the solutions I'd be looking for. I'd be looking for solutions that don't require capital expense, that you can execute under a subscription model. And it goes back to the future-proofing, the optimization of your security budget and your resources, capital dollars coming from a couple of very large organizations in my past chapters, it's very hard to come by and you're competing against, security is competing against sometimes capital expenses that are going to generate revenue for the organization. And sometimes we're just seen as that cost center, we're only costing the business money. And also making sure you're communicating up to all your highest levels of the organization, that they understand what's going on, they understand why we need this and what that risk is.

Jared Richardson:

Yeah, Chad, Matt, anything to add based on what you've seen, what's historically been done?

‍Chad Stevens:

I'd say you got to know what sport you're playing, to use a bad analogy, right? You got to know is your environment going to be or see capital investment favorably over expense? And then depending on that environment, you got to find the biggest and best bang for your buck. It's actually that simple. But we all know the reality is that is really hard, right? So when you're planning to justify a new investment, you're always looking for the two for one specials or the one plus one equals three. So I get something and I can provide, maybe there's another scenario where someone else in my organization gets a benefit from this, right? The security organizations that I worked in or worked around were always looking for the win-win, right? And sometimes when you're on the jar on the left, you find a good win-win and all of a sudden something that was a cost is very valuable.

‍Matt Kelley:

Yeah. So what I would say to add on to those two things, you would need to look at what has the most risk to your organization and that's where you're going to focus your time and your efforts. Life safety is probably going to outweigh theft because you can't put a price on human life. You can put a price on a widget. So things that are going to go drive life safety, it just comes down to that. It's pretty much that simple is what's the biggest risk to the organization, get alignment around that risk and then go focus on solution providers who can mitigate those risks.

‍Jared Richardson:

All right. Well, let's kind of go and we're getting towards the end here. If you have a question, please submit it in the Q&A, we'll try and get to it. A couple more things I want to cover here too is I think a lot of the great advice that we can offer that's agnostic of budget is like how to harden your site. So I just want to hear from each of you on maybe your biggest, best recommendation on hardening the site.

Brady Edwards:

Again, it goes back to solutions that in Fed space, we talk about security in-depth strategy. So you need an approach to, and I think Matt kind of touched on earlier, the layered approach to your security strategy, right? If it's not defense, a solution that you're going to push out those boundaries further from your facility, but the layered approach that you're going to protect your assets from the perimeter all the way in. So that layered approach and having the strategy that literally is that it's a layered approach to what you're doing. So I think it's really important when you're looking to harden the site that you look at it that way.

Chad Stevens:

Yeah, I actually have basically the exact same answer. I was taught the onion peel concept, right? You're trying to put as many layers of the onion in terms of protection around whatever you're trying to protect, right? So you got to look at all of the layers of the onion and say, "All right, where's my weakness?" Or, "Where is a weakness that I know I can find an effective mitigation for?" And maybe that weakness is different. And so where can I get the most flexible solution to solve as many of these problems as I can? Maybe it's a one for one, but maybe it's a one for many.

‍Matt Kelley:

Yeah, I mean, all three of us are security professionals. So the later approach concept is going to resonate with all three of us. I think for me, it's not only the layer approach, but working with solution providers that can work with one another because at the end of the day, you don't necessarily need to be competing for share of wallet with that customer. It's working towards solving customer's problems. And if you can integrate and stitch that end user experience together through finding good solution partners who will work with one another, that's only going to further harden the target along with that layer approach.

‍Jared Richardson:

And then I think I'm hearing a little bit too of resource allocation, right? And I know Brady, you and I have talked in the past about this technology versus human capital. What do we want our people doing? What do we want security guards to be doing? And I know you've got a pretty decent example of that in the healthcare scenario.

‍Brady Edwards:

Yeah. We were meeting with a customer last week and we had a really good conversation around human capital versus technology, right? And he said he never wanted to lose any of his human resources. They were important to a security program. We talked about the fact that rather than maybe that vehicle patrol that was doing that parking lot, some type of the solution that could be in that parking lot, that's always there, that's deterring, that's detecting, and then he can take that resource and he can move it maybe into his emergency room where you have violent patients coming in, especially during the summer months, in healthcare that's a huge challenge.

So that security officer being there with the staff in the emergency room, helping them to deescalate situations, that's a much better use of that resource rather than sitting out in the parking lot doing random controls. I'm not sure how effective that is anymore at this point based on the data we're seeing.

Jared Richardson:

All right. This is kind of the Jerry Springer's final thoughts moment as we wrap up this webinar as we come to time. So we've talked a lot about insights that we've delivered to the audience. We've dug into the data a little bit in terms of trends. What's something that you guys are hearing or seeing out there that's really interesting to you that you think deserves a little bit more effort, time, energy and research? We'll start with you, Matt, to put you on the spot.

Matt Kelley:

I think we've touched on I think the most interesting thing to me is the use of technology. Because we really don't fully understand as practitioners, except for in some pockets, what AI actually means, how it can impact their organization. It's at a stage right now that it's a buzzword. So what I have challenged people on is what does that really mean to you when they talk about AI? How are you getting smart really quickly on technology, especially as it evolves rapidly? Those are a lot of the things that I think about on a day-to-day basis is ensuring that when a customer talks about it, I know enough to be able to either challenge them on it or really educate them on what it means to leverage technology in their space, especially as it relates to the evolution of technology and not just historical technology.

That's really what would be my parting thought is get smart on technology, understand how it's used, how it could be applied, but then what are the requirements? Does your existing infrastructure allow you to do that? Be thinking more forwardly on what's going to be required, so as you're entering into those budget conversations, you have a really good perspective and can challenge any pushback you get.

Brady Edwards:

That's good. So mine would be kind of a piece of advice. Over my 20 years in the industry, I guess I've seen security professionals, you don't get into this line of work because you're not passionate about security and what we do. I guess my advice would be open to critical advice about your security program and that constructive criticism. Let people come out and get a new set of your eyes on your security program. You may think that every way you've been doing things is perfect. It's not broken because we've never had any issues. Everything's fine here.

But open up your security program, pull back the curtain, let people come out there and really people you trust, whether it's strategic partner or it's a friend within the organization you work for, it's really important that you go out there and you challenge the traditional way of thinking. Getting a new set of eyes on a security program, you'd be surprised what you'll find. And from my experience, usually at the end of the week, you'll find that time's very beneficial and you learn a lot.

Chad Stevens:

Yeah, I mean, I'm not a ones and zeros guy, but I think getting into the ones and zeros of technology and what that really means for your organization is really, really important. To Matt's point, yeah, what is AI going to do for us? I can't wait to see. I think it's going to do some great stuff. I don't think anyone really knows. But then when I look at something, to Brady's point, what is the complete cost of ownership for this thing, right? If I buy a fully engineered security solution, let's open up and really look at what does this thing cost me, not just in project cost, but support cost? And where am I really finding value and which one of those things does my organization value? I think just opening up on some of those questions that traditionally we've just kind of assumed to be valid, but I think we're testing some really interesting things with data and value.

Jared Richardson:

Excellent. Well, thank you Matt, Brady, Chad for your insights today. And I appreciate all of you for hopping on and attending, asking us some really good questions and just continuing to support the mission of lowering crime and increasing safety. That's it for us here at LVT Studios. Have a great rest of your day.