Follow The Money

May 1, 2005 12:00 PM

How much security is enough? There's never enough.

But while the need for security seems infinite, American businesses are seeking to meet that need with a decidedly finite amount of money.

Since all security needs cannot be met, how does one decide which ones to address? In a time of dwindling corporate resources and exponential increases in threats, how should a security professional allocate his resources?

There is no easy answer. Sometimes security professionals turn to colleagues to compare notes, or look to the industry at large for spending trends and other insights — not perfect but better than nothing.

In the interest of facilitating such information sharing among industry professionals, Access Control & Security Systems has conducted its 2005 Security Metrics Study. This article and accompanying charts will provide an overview of the survey results. Confirming the premise that security demands are expanding is this number: 43.6 percent of our survey respondents will be increasing their spending on security this year.

About the respondents

Respondents to the survey represent companies with an average of 4,066 employees and an average of 152.2 security employees. The largest number of respondents represents companies with more than 10,000 total employees (23.4 percent); 39.4 percent of respondents report that their companies have 10 security employees or less.

The average number of locations of companies represented by respondents is 155; the largest percentage (29.8 percent) represents companies with 11 to 50 locations; about a fifth have a single location.

Budgets for overall security are reflected by 26.6 percent of respondents whose budget is $100,000 to $249,999. At the other end of the spectrum, 28.7 percent have overall budgets of $2 million or more.

Relating to their budgets for electronic systems for physical security, the largest percentage of respondents (27.7 percent) fall into the $100,000 to $999,999 range. Another 26.6 percent fall into the range of $15,000 to $99,999.

Respondents were not categorized according to their type of business or institution, although multiple vertical markets — retail, manufacturing, hospitals, schools, etc. — are likely to be represented.

Security officer statistics

About 15 percent of respondents report that they do not use security guards, while the remaining respondents were divided roughly into thirds — some use commercial guards only, some use in-house guards only and some use a combination. The median starting salary for security guards (among all respondents) is $24,980, although the most common answer to the question is $20,800. Higher starting guard salaries reported by some respondents brought the average annual salary for in-house guards to $35,461. [Mean numbers (averages) tend to be more influenced by respondents who report extreme highs and lows than are median numbers (defined as the value at which there are an equal number of respondents above and below the reported number.)]

The amounts paid for commercial guard services varied widely, with about a third (32.7%) reporting that they spend a million dollars or more. Some 23.1 percent pay less than $100,000 for contract commercial guard services; another 21.2 percent pay from $250,000 to $999,999; some 11.5 percent pay from $100,000 to $249,999 per year.

How much is enough?

To offer guidance for end-users about how much money colleagues spend on various security components, we have calculated these median numbers as they relate to number of employees, number of locations, number of access points, etc. The chart on page 32 summarizes these results. These numbers are intended to provide general guidance only and possibly as a point of overall comparison and discussion. Obviously, every company is unique and every security challenge is different.

Security Budget Metrics*

HOW DO YOU MEASURE UP?

Security Budget per Employee	$393
Security Budget per Security Employee	$33,333
Physical Security Systems Budget per Employee	$63
Physical Security Systems Budget per Security Employee	$5,000
Security Budget per Location	$68,846
Physical Security Systems Budget per Location	$10,857
% of Security Budget Devoted To Physical Security Systems	17%
Access Control Budget Metrics
Access Control Budget per Employee	$53
Access Control Budget per Security Employee	$3,333
Access Control Budget per Location	$6,875
Access Control Budget per Access Point	$3,125
CCTV Metrics
CCTV Budget per Employee	$42
CCTV Budget per Security Employee	$2,762
CCTV Budget per Location	$6,250
CCTV Budget per Camera	$2,313
CCTV Budget per Access Point	$2,748
Number of Cameras per 100 Employees	1.6
Number of Cameras per Security Employee	1.03
Number of Cameras per Access Point	1.2
*ALL NUMBERS ARE MEDIANS

FOR THE RECORD

METHODOLOGY

The survey was conducted using an online questionnaire January 10-19, 2005, by Jan Rabinowitz of the Primedia Business Magazines and Media research department. Invitations were sent to 4,000 subscribers of Access Control & Security Systems or Government Security. A total of 342 responses were received; only those respondents with user-related job titles (94 respondents) were included in the study results reported here.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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