5 Questions CFOs Are Asking Their Security Directors
Physical security has often been a checkbox item — an obligatory cost center. $20B is spent each year on video surveillance alone, yet that has provided mostly forensic evidence rather than protection. For example, few organizations know how many unauthorized entries occur daily or how many of those incidents needed a response.
Historically, it’s been impractical to monitor everything recorded. But now with greater pressure on cybersecurity liability and regulatory compliance, CFOs are asking about their cost per monitored hour, since active monitoring is what secures things.
If security leaders don’t know metrics like their mean time to respond to key security incidents, they aren’t leveraging the tools available to reduce risks and to provide cost-effective and protective security. As CFOs fund security programs, they’re now asking these ROI-focused questions:
1. How many people entered buildings today without authorization?
Knowing who is inside a facility at any time is critical to SOC 2, PCI DSS and HIPAA compliance. It also fundamentally reduces cybersecurity risk, threats to employees and theft. Automated unauthorized access detection integrated with leading access control systems triggers alerts each time a tailgating, Door Held Open (DHO)/Door Forced Open (DFO) with inbound people incident occurs. Even in areas without physical perimeter security, the latest AI reliably detects whenever a sensitive area is breached.
2. What percentage of unauthorized entries are triaged within 5 minutes? (including inbound people in Door Held Open and Door Forced Open events)
The same systems that automatically detect unauthorized access can also be used to measure, monitor and improve security operations. Dashboards not only reveal incident details (day, time, frequency) but also metrics like mean time to triage and number of incidents resolved within a particular period. Data quantifies results, pinpoints weaknesses, and informs staffing requirements.
3. What is our cost per monitored hour? (vs. unexamined evidence collection)
Millions of dollars are spent on security video equipment and storage. Yet only a tiny fraction of recorded video is monitored and even less is ever reviewed. Recording video that’s never seen has no protective value outside of after-the-fact investigations. Capturing all significant events and enabling guard dispatch precisely when and where needed multiplies forces by 50x.
4. How many of our guard responses were interventions in a real security threat?
Equipping guards with mobile video alerts that summarize incidents for instant triage enables protective responses to incidents still in-progress. Without tools to respond to true threats like unauthorized entries and humans or vehicles in restricted areas, guards are relegated to random tours or non-essential tasks — reducing their coverage and effectiveness.
5. How are we ensuring our operations are resilient to supplier and supply chain problems?
The Covid-19 pandemic exposed global vulnerability to supply chain issues. Video surveillance that depends on proprietary hardware creates dependencies that compromise security and safety operations. Cloud Native systems run on any hardware available to reduce the sourcing and supply chain risks of single-vendor solutions.
Technology has the power to transform the economics and effectiveness of physical security. CFOs pay for risk reduction. AI makes it possible for their security programs to be more responsive via real-time threat detection, in-progress event mitigation, and resource deployment exactly when and where needed. At the same time, AI makes those security solutions more measurable through program and personnel performance metrics — a built-in means to quantify the value of their physical security investment.
It’s now economically feasible to protect with real-time responses. Intelligent video surveillance augments human attention and incident detection, giving security directors the tools to match their programs to the CFO’s heightened attention to ROI while creating safer working and living communities.
