Regardless of size of the region of interest, be it a country or company, HR and Security must work together by assessing their own incident reporting from the ground to fully comprehend their own narrative. Security success to limit the COVID-19 collateral damage will depend on the level of situational awareness of the people on the ground and their reaction speed. The security officers on the ground are first line of defense. Furthermore, they are also the ones that gather information from the people on the ground by:

  1. Finding a person of concern.
  2. Establishing who they have been in contact with.

Considerations for Protocols

  • The HR manager may be notified of a person that is on sick leave. The reason of the sickness needs to be qualified and validated. Hopefully, the person discloses the truth of their sickness.
  • If the person has contracted COVID-19, then, the security manager must now use access control and video surveillance to trace the interactions the person had with others.
  • One may need to install analytical software with facial recognition software to assist in the search.
  • There may be thermal detectors installed in the video surveillance software but that will only be effective once a person’s condition goes into full-blown status. The objective of the tracing of others is to detect the social interaction between people. 
  • The video surveillance and access control records of the last 14 days since the sick person reported must be viewed.
  • The tracking must be from entry to exits, including perimeter security. Perhaps, the person arrived at work with different people from different departments and separated once they walked through perimeter security.
  • The people that interacted with the person of interest, now have to be put on the top of the health monitoring list for at least 14 days.
  • The Security Manager cannot simply rely on the video surveillance or access control technology because not all areas are under surveillance. They would need to go on the ground to conduct a critical situational interview with people of concern that may have interacted with the sick person. However, people may not be forthcoming with information for various reasons mentioned herein.

Getting the Most Out of Incident Management Software or Incident Reporting

The practitioner must read the situation using critical thinking outside and inside the box. The mission is to gather all-the-information from the people on the ground, which calls for deception detection and critical situational interviewing because people may lie or hide information for a number of reasons. Using critical thinking is key!

For the entire protocol document and other guidance, visit ISIO.