Specifically Speaking with Timothy Minor

YARMOUTH, Maine—Security Systems News talks with Founder and President of T.A.Minor & Associates Timothy Minor in our monthly column featuring top consultants within security.

What kinds of systems do you design/specify including services you provide?

We offer services to include Policy and Procedures, physical security assessments/ risk assessments, threat assessments, security planning and design, security project management, red teaming and simulations, training and presenter services, A&E services, case studies and specialty services.

Areas of focus include Entertainment Venues, Commercial Buildings (Office Buildings), Commercial Buildings (Manufacturing), Data Centers, Supply Chain and Logistical Hubs, Schools and Places of Worship, New Construction Security Design, Hospitals and Industrial/R&D.

At T.A.Minor 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 companies existing security methods. Then taking and editing the downfalls and testing them in simulation.

This gives us a more complex red team look at a facility as well to help insure to the customer that we are implementing the correct security tool 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 standards for the security industry as well as some other independently sourced variables to obtain our methods and our results.   

How did you get started in security and designing and specifying?

I founded T.A.Minor & Associates in 2019. I started doing independent consulting in 2017, right before I was medically retired from the United States Army. After I was injured, I was put on desk duty and had to dig into government regulations on how certain facilities needed to be designed. That is how I found the passion to help secure people, property and how it is intrinsically difficult to execute. This made me want to find ways to make it easier to understand and to learn about security techniques.

T.A.Minor was created so that we could better serve my ever growing client base and to meet their needs and demands of the client and to design and execute so that management can understand the benefits of doing things certain ways.

Can you talk about what new or emerging technologies you are seeing or specifying today?

The use of automation in the security world is growing faster than what the client can keep up with. 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 important and what information is just noise.

What is your view on the industry moving forward?

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 (Cyber Security) 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. This is what we try to bring to clients as it is important to grow as a team and not segregate your resources.

We believe that the security world is moving to a different methodology of how to combat the ever-changing world. We think that CPTED is very important in this rapid change in the world though not a new method by any means it is just becoming more important to think about the behavioral normality’s that you have at your facility as well as the normal environment that you have to ensure that your policies and procedures meet with the environment that they are designed for as well as that the environment is designed to help make it easier to manage.        

Specifically Speaking, a Security Systems News monthly column, features Q-and-A with a security consultant provided to SSN by SecuritySpecifiers.