Safeguarding Municipal Infrastructure with Site-Specific Security Risk Assessments

Rozin Security Approach

To grasp the complete picture of the municipality’s various buildings and parks, they must first focus on individual assets (e.g., the operations of a specific site or facility). From here, they can expand to understanding how individual sites and facilities were treated as assets and prioritized within the overall municipal system.

Rozin Security began by conducting an in-depth on-site security risk assessment of the municipality’s City Hall building, Public Works, Parks, and Public Safety buildings, and additional critical utility infrastructures.

In addressing the client’s vulnerabilities, Rozin Security divided the corrective measures into three broad categories:

1. Physical security features (exp., fencing and window safety features).
2. Technological security features (exp., access control mechanisms and closed-circuit television cameras)
3. Human asset security features (exp., increased security personnel presence and better-defined protocols).

Consultants took a layered security approach at each site while conducting the assessment, recognizing that a single element alone wouldn’t suffice for safeguarding high-profile public-facing buildings and facilities. This approach encompassed:

1. Understanding the regular and periodic operational processes of the site.
2. Identify and prioritize assets essential to the operations and reputation of each site.
3. Develop the site’s threat profile, including relevant threat actors and likely modus operandi.
4. Conduct interviews of onsite personnel and site walkthroughs to identify security deficiencies that leave assets vulnerable to potential threats.
5. Perform a nighttime assessment to attempt access to the site and its assets.

Results

Consultants established the site’s total risk and recommended corrective measures across physical, technological, staffing, policy, and procedural aspects to enhance security preparedness. Prioritization was based on the measures’ effectiveness in deterring, preventing, detecting, and responding to threats, ensuring the best return on investment.

After conducting individual site assessments, Rozin Security developed a comprehensive security master plan incorporating security trends across all sites. Municipal-level monitoring protocols were established, aligning coverage with site criticality to optimize resource allocation. Specific trends addressed included:

• Monitoring consistent vulnerabilities in access control
• Ensuring proper allocation of security personnel
• Addressing inadequate training.
• Implementing a proper threat assessment and management program.
• Identifying opportunities for unified security leadership.
• Integrating active threat response systems.
• Enhancing security awareness training for both physical and cyber threats.

This project enabled the client to address security needs at both micro and macro levels, identifying and prioritizing assets at individual sites while considering their role within the broader municipal system. Rozin Security’s recommendations, beneficial to various sectors, extend beyond government entities and can be applied to critical infrastructure industries like commerce, transportation, healthcare, and industry.

Once the site’s total risk was established, consultants provided recommendations for physical, technological, staffing, policy, and procedural corrective measures to improve the site’s security preparedness in the face of relevant threats. Recommended corrective measures were prioritized based on their abilities to deter, prevent, detect, and respond to relevant threats. In this way, consultants could highlight those corrective measures that would provide the greatest return on investment for the individual site.

After assessing all municipal sites individually, consultants assisted the municipal government in creating a security master plan. Results of individual site assessments were aggregated to establish trends in overall security preparedness requirements. Additionally, security-systems monitoring protocols were established at the municipal level to provide coverage of sites based on their relative criticality to municipal operations and reputation. This would allow for a more effective allocation of security resources.

Through this project, Rozin Security consultants demonstrated the ability to address the multi-facility organization’s security needs at the micro and macro levels. At the micro level, consultants identified and prioritized individual assets related to the operations of a specific site or facility. At the macro level, individual sites and facilities were treated as assets and prioritized within the municipal system. In addition to identifying which security improvements were needed across the board, the municipality could allocate security resources based on which sites and facilities had the greatest operational and reputational value. Aside from being very beneficial to local, state, and national government entities, this methodology may be effectively applied to multi-facility organizations in other critical infrastructure sectors, including commerce, transportation, healthcare, and industry.