Risk and Security Management Forum

The Risk and Security Management Forum (RSMF) is a non-partisan, non-profit making organisation established in 1990 with the aim of promoting professionalism in risk and security management and to provide a forum in which members can discuss problems in an atmosphere of confidentiality (all meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule).

It consists of some 60 senior security practitioners and risk managers drawn from a wide range of commercial and industrial organisations, government departments, the armed forces and the police. There are, in addition, a number of academics with an interest in such things as crime prevention and public order.

Membership is by invitation only and most have a background at a fairly senior level in the police, armed forces or other public sector departments. It meets four times a year to discuss topics of mutual interest and to exchange ideas and information. The aim of the RSMF is to advance the effective management of risk in all areas of security and to bridge the gap between the public, private and government arms of the security profession.

It works in association with a number of groups including:

• AKJ Associates an: "international facilitator in the new world of public private partnerships, business risk and international security... known for consolidating working partnerships comprising international corporations, government, policing and intelligence agencies."
• Information Security Forum ,
• the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre,
• the National Crime Squad,
• the Home Office.
• the Office for Civil Nuclear Security.

RSMF uses the expertise of its members to:

• identify and communicate effective risk and security management;
• promote the benefits of effective risk and security management to senior executives;
• advise opinion formers in the public and private sectors on these issues; and
• develop inclusive ways of identifying, analysing, assessing, and controlling risk for the public and private sectors.

Information assurance is becoming a more significant part of RSMF work, particularly the areas of data centre protection — both physically and electronically and the impact of e-crimes on corporate brands, including market value.

RSMF holds four seminars each year on a wide range of information security-related topics. Recent subjects include the Government’s counter-terrorist programme and Crown control in emergencies. RSMF has run master classes for senior security professionals focused on communications and the human resources issues associated with response management of major terrorist attacks. While these activities are aimed primarily at members, other senior security professionals are invited to attend.

In some RSMF security fora in which there is high interpersonal trust, businesses also learn from private information sharing about unpublicised cases, these operate under 'Chatham House rules.'

Members

• Rachel Briggs a member of RSMF, and of Demos and the Foreign Policy Centre and organised a seminar (December 14 2005 and 18 January 2006) on Risk and Security management. Speakers included, Nikki Heath, CEO, SOE Academy; Linda Sharpe, Interim Chief Executive, Skills for Security; Professor Edward Borodzicz, Director, Centre for Risk, Crisis and Security Management, University of Portsmouth; and David Burrill, (below).

Seminars were chaired by Briggs, Head of International Programmes at Demos and were part of a Demos research project, Getting Down to Business: Aligning security with business objectives. The project was supported by BP, British Airways, Control Risks Group, E.On, Group 4 Securicor Global Risks Ltd., HSBC, Kroll, Prudential, Qinetiq, and Shell.

The Foreign Policy Centre have also published, 'Global Europe' which stems from their project of the same name which aimed: " to provide concrete policy recommendations concerning the European Security Strategy and new initiatives for European action". An overview of its approach is set out in Global Europe: Implementing the European Security Strategy by Mark Leonard and Richard Gowan which was produced in association with The British Council, The European Commission and Wilton Park ("an academically independent and non-profit-making Executive Agency of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Launched in 1946, it has become one of the world's leading centres for discussion of key international policy challenges, organising about 50 conferences a year while holding to the values of its founders to promote honest and open debate on the key issues."

• Professor Martin Gill: Director of Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International (PRCI)
• Dr. Giovanni Manunta: Ex-military Italian security consultant and lecturer.
• Mike Hoare: Undertaking long term research into the educational needs of security practitioners at management level and is working in collaboration with a number of higher education providers and the Security Institute
• Mike Groves, also of the Security Institute.
• [Stephanie Daman]]: Spent seventeen years working for the UK Government on security-related issues, and was seconded to the Cabinet Office, and to the British Embassy in Washington DC during this period . In 2000, she joined Level 3 Communications, a start up company with its own fibre optic network, as their Director, European Security. In 2002, she joined RAND Europe, the European division of the RAND Corporation. After a short time with The Inkerman Group dealing with Information Assurance issues at the beginning of 2003, she was invited to join HSBC Holdings plc as Head of Information Assurance in October 2003.

Throughout her career, Stephanie has been involved in the protection of information, and in the development of information assurance as a concept. Stephanie is a member of ASIS, The Security Institute (TSyI), and the Institute of Directors (IoD). She is also a member of the Information Assurance Advisory Council (IAAC), a founder member and leader of the Director's Information Assurance Network (DIAN) which is sponsored by IAAC and co-authored "Engaging the Board: Corporate Governance and Information Assurance".

• David Burrill: A member of private security consulatants Burrill Green, Burrill has been a professional international Intelligence and Security operator/manager for most of his professional life. On retiring from the military in 1992, having held the appointment of Deputy Director Intelligence Corps, and Chief of Staff Intelligence and Security Centre of the UK Armed Forces, he joined British American Tobacco as Head of Security. He is a Freeman of the City of London, and has had close and regular contact with the private security sector for over 25 years.

A graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the Army Command and Staff Course and the Open University, he has been a Defence Fellow of London University and is a Fellow of three British professional institutes: the Chartered Management Institute, The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, and The Security Institute. A member of the International Security Management Association, he was (1998-99) its President (the first non North American to hold the position). He sits on the Stakeholder Advisory Board of the UK Security Industry Authority and on the Advisory Board of the newly formed, and Switzerland/Germany based, International Security Tuition Association.

In 2003, Burrill became the first co-Chairman and was instrumental in the setting up of SISBO the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Security Information Service for Business Overseas — a public/private sector partnership initiative — and served as SISBO's first private sector chair. Burrill was also the first non-American private sector director of OSAC, the US State Department's Overseas Security Advisory Centre.

In April 2005, Burrill was honoured by CSO journal, with a Compass award for visionary leadership, and by ASIS International as the first recipient of its European Leadership Award. Burrill was awarded an OBE in the 2004 New Years Honours List for services to international security management.

Has played important roles in networks such as RSMF and Selwyn House (another 'grouping of the UK's key corporate security players'), and also works with Foreign Policy Centre and Demos stating “Corporate Security is to Companies what National Security is to Nations.” Recently, he has been appointed as the Deputy Colonel Commandant of the British Army’s Intelligence Corps; an honorary appointment with responsibilities for welfare and ‘esprit de Corps’ matters for serving and retired members.

He spoke with Peter de la Billiere to a meeting of the Regional Boards of Philip Morris, European Round Table Working Group and has represented ERT's security interests, including engagements in EU public and private sector partnership initiatives to counter terrorism and crime. He spoke at a CBI conference in Birmingham November, 2004 with Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5 and Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, chairman of defence and security experts Qinetiq. which also featured Stephanie Daman referred to above.