| | November 20228IN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONIn the early 2000s, owners and managers of tall buildings scrambled to improve the security of their assets, their tenants, and the millions of visitors that frequented their sites annually. In a rush to enhance the security and safety of their buildings, along with the people who occupied them, facility managers invested millions of dollars on access controls, monitoring systems, and people to ensure they were better prepared for unexpected events. On the heels of historic and unprecedented events, the Building Owners and Managers Association of Greater Los Angeles (BOMA) partnered with the RAND Corporation in 2002 to review the state of building-security in that city. The results of the study, noting a surge in additional cameras, perimeter controls and security personnel, would look familiar to today's InfoSec professionals. In an especially foretelling passage, the 20-year-old study predicts: "Although a `security standard' has not emerged, we expect stricter access controls of one type or another to be permanent additions to downtown high-rise buildings."Prior to 2000, it was not uncommon for visitors to be able to roam from floor to floor, hallway to hallway, and business to business, unfettered once they passed through the lobby doors. After 2001, this free access was significantly curtailed by security guards, turnstiles, card-controlled doorways, which were in turn monitored by cameras, facial recognition systems. More recently, visitors are even monitored by artificial intelligence engines designed to predict disruption.When it comes to protecting corporate digital assets, it's high time that the owners and managers of corporate networks take the same approach and sense of urgency as their physical-security counterparts. In another interesting parallel between defending physical buildings and digital castles, the RAND report stated the following: "The prevention decisions within the control of building owners and managers center on `hardening the target,' which can accomplish (1) deterrence and (2) detection and denial."Earl DubyBUILDING UNTRUSTED NETWORKS TO IMPROVE SECURITYBy Earl Duby, Vice President and CISO, Lear
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