Security Science: Defining the Discipline

Security experts normally create an impression that security is an art.

Yet sciences realistically tend to have something in their wake.

Medical science has medicine.

Education has learning science pedagogy.

What then is the intellectual foundation behind security?

The term is prominent all over in the industry.

Discipline is necessary with regard to security.

Discipline should be exercised by security professionals.

Discipline is a foundation of good security.

And this is considered true.

Security professionals are called daily upon to evaluate behaviour, calibrate danger signs and deal with and handle incidents, coordination with law enforcers and judgement call in uncertain conditions.

These are not simple tasks. They include critical thinking, ability to detect patterns, awareness of a situation and decision making in stress.

Good security practice is an unspoken professionalism known as discipline. The skills that enable one to be alert when working on long shifts, to record events in the right manner, to adhere to the procedures and be responsible even in cases where there is minimum supervision.

But there is one significant question about the word discipline.

The Knowledge Base of Security

What is the knowledge base of security in the event that security is indeed a discipline.

The majority of well-established professions are edificed on well-defined bodies of knowledge. Medical science forms the basis of medicine. Engineering is based on the engineering science. Centuries of legal studies support law.

These fields are the roots/foundations of intellectual and theoretical support of professional practice. They structure knowledge, determine strategies, and determine patterns under which professionals interpret complicated situations.

History has however been different with security practice.

In most parts of the world, security knowledge has been developed based on the experience as opposed to the formulated academic structures. The training programmes impart procedures, regulations and operational protocols, but seldom put them into the context of an understandable scientific field.

Consequently, the industry tends to work with a great deal of accumulated experience and little conceptualisation.

This forms a curious contradiction.

The Contradiction in Security Practice

Security professionals regularly undertake multidimensional tasks that include risk evaluation, interpretation of behaviour, gathering of intelligence, technological systems and incidental decision making. These practices involve critical thinking and organized learning.

Even so, the intellectual schools of thought behind these activities are hardly ever defined as a structured discipline.

The Emergence of Security Science

It is possible to study security means in general and utilize security science to conceptualize understanding how societies anticipate, prevent, manage and respond to threats. It combines the wisdom of various disciplines, such as criminology, risk management, behavioural science, intelligence studies, and cybersecurity as well as organisational governance.

Instead of competing with such disciplines, Security Science is an integrative paradigm that unites them in a core mission, which is to comprehend and enumerate security threat.

Security practice will no longer be taken as an activity that is seen as operational. It is rather applied field based on disorganised knowledge.

This distinction matters.

Why Structured Knowledge Matters

Professions cannot be concerned just with the activities of practitioners. They are characterized by the body of knowledge informing such tasks, and systems that demonstrate the validity of professional competence.

Professional authority becomes hard to make when the knowledge is fragmented.

Once knowledge is structured, codified, though, the structuring of sets of competence, understandable career progression, and solid professional identity can be formed.

The Expanding Role of the Security Industry

The private security sector is now growing fast in various parts of the world such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Africa and the Caribbean over the last twenty years. Security staffs who have assumed the role with high degree of responsibility today include safeguarding infrastructure and surveillance of intelligence as well as assessing behaviour such as risks and managing crises.

With an increasing number of these demands, there is an increasing urgency of a more comprehensible intellectual underpinning.

A subject does not only offer knowledge. It provides structure. It determines the way in which practitioners learn and how competence is acquired, and legitimisation of authority.

From Training to Professionalisation

In the absence of a disciplinary background, the primary tendency of the professionalisation initiatives is the desire to raise the training demands. Although training is essential it does not make a profession by simply increasing the number of hours of training.

The consequence of the knowledge, governance, and practice being unified in a coherent construction is called a profession.

Security Science provides an avenue to such congruency.

The discipline offers intellectual architecture through which a professional should evolve by stating the tenets, approaches, and areas of expertise underpinning security practice.

It does not in any way take away the significance of operational experience. Instead, practice has been kept at the centre stage. It is the organisational understanding of practice that changes.

Theory is linked up to experience.

Operational knowledge is combined to the wider structure of analysis.

Structured learning informs professional judgement and not individual experience.

In this regard, the evolution of the Security Science is a logical step towards the maturity of the security industry.

The existence of security work has never been new.

However, careers need more than employment.

They require knowledge.

Discipline may be the source of security.

However, discipline does not make professions.

They are constructed based on organised knowledge.

References

Abbott, A. (1988). The System of Professions. Freidson, E. (2001). Professionalism: The Third Logic. Gill, M. (2014). The Handbook of Security. Loader, I. & Walker, N. (2007). Civilizing Security.