Safety & Security Risks: Shared Continuum But Distinct, Unique Actors & Agitators

Safety and security share a spectrum of risks with distinctions increasingly blurred, overlapped or co-shared.

However, safety and security risks do not always, if at all, share the same actors, adversaries or agitators.

That is, many safety risk management objectives or focus relate to failures of machines, mechanisms, systems and processes.

Human violations are also more inclined to focus on unintentional, accidental or inadvertent failures to follow guidelines, understand requirements or results of human fallacies and vulnerability.

In short, factors are in part human related but remain typically non-malicious when it comes to intent.

By comparison, security remains predominately about intelligent, adaptive and deliberate actors and agitators intentionally circumventing or exploiting natural and applied controls with intent for gain, control or malicious purposes.

Therefore, safety and security risks may share a continuum, but at the extremes, the actors, intent and agitators remain uniquely and distinctly different.

With that said, safety and security risks remain a very complex and dynamic field of study and real world complexity.

For example, a malicious human actor may commit a crime, breach controls or execute harmful intent via creation of a safety failure or violation, that becomes a crisis, emergency or significant security risk incident.

This is particularly prevalent across digital and physical space, where a hacker may disrupt facility controls and processes the result in failure, closure, disruption or damage of necessary, essential and critical services such as power, water, communications or transport.

Therefore, safety and security practices, realities and people need to remain aware of each other, collaborate but retain vital, distinct expertise respective to their relevant safety and/or security disciplines.

Safety and security are NOT a universally complimentary or shared vocation, despite compressed titles and functions that attempt to make it so for purposes of economy or ignorance.

This reality is most prominent in the assessment of threats, harm, vulnerabilities and resulting risk.

Criminological and security risk methodologies and practices are neither natural nor sufficiently mature within safety practices to attempt, compliment or conduct such evaluations.

While there are shared, common psychological factors, the void between safety and security remains extensive.

In sum, safety and security risks share a continuum but unique and distinctly different threat actors, agitators and factors creating harm.

Moreover, the skills and expertise required to analyse or assess safety and security threats remain highly specialised, with limited overlapping knowledge and competencies.

Therefore, risk represents a collective umbrella for consideration but not a universal structure for security and safety risk management.

Especially for malicious, adaptive and intentional actors such as criminals, insiders, terrorists, activists, hackers and the many and varied other threat actors/adversaries that comprise the security threat and risk landscape.

Tony Ridley, MSc CSyP MSyI M.ISRM

Security, Risk & Management Sciences