Authors:
E. Tonsfeldt, C. Wingfield, S. Hopper
Partnerships in the Security Industry
The security industry has long been defined by territoriality around clientele, business model, region, and specialized service. Collaboration, where it appears, exists largely in the form of subcontracting to fulfill a client’s immediate need and with the subcontractors often acting as members of the primary firm, with their services and product “white labeled” and resold to the end user. Overt partnerships, on the other hand, are often seen in the form of warm handoffs or recommendations, with little collaboration on behalf of the client. Both models are valid, and work to flex a company’s capacity or capability without the inherent time and expense of recruiting, staffing, training, and then scrambling to retain staff after what is frequently not a sustained period of growth. The trade-off is a potential sacrifice in quality, consistency, and profit margin.
360 Privacy and Foresight Security Consulting approached our partnership outside of pressure to fill a need, and with the idea that we could create new products or service lines that would benefit existing and future customers, not detract from each company’s current offerings, and would feed easily into existing verticals for each partner.
And it worked. Not only that, but we identified ways to collaborate on existing products that compounded resources, increased throughput, and decreased resource use by leveraging each other’s expertise.
The largest benefit to the clients (and to our communities) in all cases that we’ve identified is that our solutions are more holistic, which speaks directly to each company’s basic underpinnings. Foresight’s first value is “Better Care for People.” Foresight approaches physical security, program development, executive and close protection, behavioral threat assessment/management and vulnerability/risk assessment with a prevention mindset. 360 Privacy solves intricate problems through a proactive approach to Digital Executive Protection that is multi-layered, grounded in the current threat landscape, and constantly evolving to counter the ever-changing digital threats. Together, our diverse skillsets and areas of expertise provide a broad spectrum of threat awareness and investigative capability that is truly one of most holistic out-of-the-box approaches in the industry that we’ve found.
Lessons Learned in Security Partnerships
Here's what we learned from putting our heads together:
Have an abundance mindset when seeking partnerships: it isn’t a reflection of an inability to adequately provide services, but an understanding that others have specialized in areas that you haven’t. Partnering enhances the ability to serve clients.
Products and service models should intuitively escalate into existing verticals for each partner where possible.
Specialized tools shouldn’t overlap and should instead increase the power of the collective with the client in mind.
Not every product or service model needs to be an obvious homerun. Seemingly small things like increased throughput, reduced resource expenditure and greater stewardship of client resources can justify partnering.
Partnerships need to be operationalized. The identification of new services and products helps cement value sets and improves the offerings of both companies.
The people and cultures that do it well are ones that identify a personal connection.
Collaborative partnerships between security companies can be incredibly beneficial for both parties and their clients. By focusing on the client experience and operationalizing the partnership through product and service collaborations, companies can provide a more holistic, powerful, and streamlined security approach than either company could have achieved on their own.