40 under 40: Timothy Minor, T.A. Minor & Associates

First, he served our country. Now Timothy Minor, CAPM, is serving the security industry at the young age of 24, and he hasn’t even graduated college yet!

Minor is the founder and president of T.A. Minor & Associates, a security and management consulting firm he formed in 2019, where he serves as a physical security and management consultant.

“I work with our R&D Department, as well as the Simulation Department, daily working on improving and innovating our simulation by adding more features to ensure more accuracy and precision,” he told Security Systems News. “I go to college full-time, finishing my degree in May 2021. When I am not working on those two main things, I am on the phone gaining and building relationships with clients and other professionals in the field.”

Before founding his own consulting firm, Minor started doing independent consulting since 2017 out of his Army barracks room, right before he was medically retired from the United States Army.

“T.A. Minor was created so that I could better serve my ever-growing client base and to meet their needs and demands to the best of my ability,” he explained. “I also started the company to be able to better serve larger companies and handle large multi-scale projects.”

Minor got into the security industry after he was injured while serving in the Army.

“When I was put onto desk duty, I was tasked with making our facility up to date with the standards set in place by the Department of the Army, as well as the other DoD [Department of Defense] governing doctrines,” he said.

Automation

Minor pointed out the emergence of automation as one of the top trends in the security industry.

“The use of automation in the security world is growing faster than what the client can keep up with,” he explained. “You buy something new and it is already old technology. This is causing issues with the mass amount of information you are collecting and to know what issues are and what are not issues. It is causing the ‘boy who cried wolf’ phenomenon because there is no way to differentiate what is an accident and what is a real threat. I have noticed that there are a lot of new sorting tools and techniques that are up and coming to help you understand what information is important and what information is just noise.”

Exciting New Technology 

Minor cited some “interesting and exciting new technology” that his companyis working on right now.

“We have started a new department within the company to help develop and implement a new method to test the security and safety of a building, using simulations and the company’s existing security methods, then taking and editing the downfalls and testing them in simulation,” he explained. “This gives us a more complex ‘red team’ look at a facility, as well as help insure to the customer that we are implementing the correct security tools and techniques when we give the customers the recommendations for improving their systems. Without giving away too much of the proprietary methods, we are using the ANSI [American National Standards Institute] standards for the security industry, as well as some other independently sourced variables to obtain our methods and our results.”

Evolving and Adjusting  

During these unprecedented times that the COVID-19 pandemic has created, Minor noted the importance of evolving and adjusting on a daily basis in order to not fall behind.

“I think the most important thing that these trying times have shown is that there will always be a ‘black swan’ event that can flip everything that you know and understand,” he said. “I feel that if you are not evolving and adjusting everyday then you are behind.”

Speaking of the security industry as a whole, Minor added that “this pandemic has shown how important the safety side of security has been overlooked by most for way too long. An approach that we take is that you are checking in on companies, even if they do not use our services, to ensure that they are doing okay in these trying times.

“It is important to network during trying times as after the fog of this has lifted, those are the people who they remember because we were there when they needed you most. We do not try and sell products or solutions to them during this time; we are acting in more of a friendship/advisory role to help CSO’s and CISO’s know what others are doing and what is working. It is not always about the sale; it is about making sure that everyone gets though these trying times.”

Technology-Based Approach

When asked what his views are on the security industry going forward, Minor noted that

“the industry moving forward is a more technology-based approach with less actual guards and more analysts sifting through the information that they are getting. This is causing a communication disconnect with the IT (cybersecurity) and Security departments as they must work together to combat the future issues that face companies.

“The bad guys are using both physical and technologically based attacks. Because of this way that cyber and physical security professionals communicate are so intrinsically different than each other. In the future I see a more combined approach from the cyber side and the physical side to help combat issues with companies as one unit instead of two competing units.”

Knowledge is Power

As one who entered the security industry at a very young age, Minor pointed out the importance of not only being specialized in one area, but also having knowledg in other areas of security.

“I feel like being able to specialize yourself but have the knowledge of what other arms of a security team are doing is important to the number of young professionals getting into the career field,” he said. “Even if you do not know cyber security you must understand its principles as a physical security professional and vice versa, gathering the knowledge of other security domains so that you are not competing with other sectors of security. Everyone wants to keep the assets safe; it is understanding what the others do to intrinsically help you gain your goals.”