What is Behavioural Security
Behavioural security examines how human behaviour shapes the security decisions. We made our safety and security choices in all aspects of our daily life, from residential and workplace security to safeguarding our family lives and protecting assets. Business entities, social institutions and government agencies actively engaging protection measures for themselves and stakeholders. Every day, we make countless security judgments—both deliberate and subconscious—from consciously locking our doors before leaving house to instinctively avoiding strangers in public space.
Why Behavioural Security
By far, humans are the biggest source of security threats, where it could be arises from malicious intent, negligence or simply an error, but that can be predicted and managed; Meantime, how humans perceive the threats and subsequently how to response, are greatly varies among individual, but those judgements and decisions are generally explainable and hence foreseeable. Nevertheless, human behaviour is inherently complex, shaped by combination of biology, psychology, social and environmental influences. It is ever-changing, adaptive and dynamic in nature. This is precisely why understanding security decisions through the lens of human behaviour is so critically important for security professionals, to clearly understand these dynamic situations of both the sources of threat and protection targets, for effective security strategies.
Turning Weaknesses into Strengths
People is one of the three core components for security program, besides technology and operational procedures. Humans design and operate the security program, aided by advanced equipment and standard protocols. Paradoxically, it was humans who created the security, and defeated it. This duality presents an opportunity: through behavioural analysis of security operations, we can mitigate human-related vulnerabilities while leveraging human capabilities to our advantage. Through the behavioural insights, we can turn liabilities into assets.
Application of Behavioural Security
From psychological point of view, human behaviour refers to action or inaction of individual or group, in response to internal or external stimuli. It could be an observable action, or merely a feeling and thoughts. The role of psychological factors and behavioural influences is long-established and deep-rooted in security domain. Strategies like the ‘deterrence factor’ and ‘show of force’ employ psychological principles both to discourage potential attacks and enhance the ‘sense of security’ – a critical psychological objective in itself.
Take, for instance, when walking alone through a dark alley at night, it may evoke the fear of crime, thus avoiding walking alone as prevention measure, or carry pepper spray as protective action. This fear may come from the perception of risk for being alone, or the darkness of the street, or as a result of bad experience previously encountered. Individuals perceive risk differently under similar circumstances – like walking alone through a dark alley. This variation in risk assessment leads to different security decisions among people. Additionally, personal risk tolerance further influences how people ultimately respond to potential threats. The understanding of the interplays between individual factors and/or external cues that lead to a security decision, provides valuable insights for security professionals to design more effective security program.
The concept of human behaviour also widely applied in the daily operational level. As example, a well-groomed security officer in full uniform appears more authoritative and may command greater respect. This highlights the power of first impressions—how people instinctively form snap judgments based on appearance. Such perceptions directly enhance both the sense of security for those protected and the deterrence effect against potential threats. In psychological term, this is called “halo effect”, a type of heuristic or mental shortcut to make a judgement, a tendency to assume well-groomed security personnel are good in other areas. Conversely, an untidy appearance will lead to negative perception and feeling of bad security. This is an example how security professional leverage on human cognitive bias for the advantage of security performance.
Behavioural Security looks beyond traditional security approaches that focus solely on technological and procedural controls, it examines how human psychology, cognitive biases and neuroscience influence on decision-making process. By understanding these behavioural patterns, security professional can design more effective strategies, reducing vulnerabilities stemming from irrational or predictable behaviours. From scientific perspective, human has limitations to stay alert for long period, hence the need for rotating security guards at appropriate intervals based on specific job demands. For example, static duties for CCTV monitoring, security posts or at building main entrance, should have rotated at interval of every 2 hours, due to physical and cognitive fatigue. According to Mackworth Clock test, human vigilance level will drop significantly after approximately 30 minutes of sustain focus, and that’s why highly focus security jobs require even more frequent rotations, such as airport security screener.
However, in the reality, long hours of duty, multitasking or poor working conditions are common phenomenon across security industry. Under such conditions, how can we realistically expect the high performance? Returning to the above example of the “halo effect”, even a well-groomed security officer may fail to project a strong first impression if overburdened by heavy workloads or prolonged repetitive tasks, ultimately appearing fatigued and unresponsive manner. Yet all too often, security personnel often bear the blame and being scapegoat to the poor leadership.
Challenges
Security field is inherently multidisciplinary, offering rich opportunities to adapt and integrate knowledge from other fields like behavioural science. A critical gap, in my view, is the absence of human behaviour as a dedicated discipline within security studies. This oversight limits our understanding of how perception shapes security effectiveness.
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