On a recent Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer shocked our local community by stating the obvious: "Even after the carnage at an Amish school in Lancaster County last week, a spot check by Inquirer reporters found a surprising number of security lapses at schools across the region. In spite of rules aimed at limiting public access, reporters who fanned out on a single day walked into more than a dozen schools unannounced and without being challenged." Schools Caught Short on Security, The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 2006

Many people think that security is the security manager's issue. However, on a recent blog post, I stated: "You can't rely on your employees and consultants to use common sense when it comes to your company's security. Remember to continually communicate the boundaries of permission to remind everyone that safety and security are team issues."

In the case of the school security breaches, well-meaning teachers and students, as well as hapless employees and contractors, provided unauthorized and unsupervised access. Luckily, the intruders were reporters; there were no casualties other than reputations and peace of mind.

In order to understand why this security lapse is particularly astonishing at this time, here is the background for those who don't live in Pennsylvania and may not know: A gunman had recently invaded a one room Amish schoolhouse, killing 5, severely injuring 5, and traumatizing the whole community. Subsequently, the often repeated message has been, if this can happen at that one room schoolhouse in the middle of the countryside in a peace-loving community, it can happen anywhere. We should step up efforts to keep our kids safe because of the high likelihood of copycat crimes.

These security lapses occurred at a time of heightened security. If a murderer had come sneaking in the side door, the consequences would have been very deadly. While most of us don't have to worry quite this much about our policies and procedures, it made me stop and think.

There were policies in place at all of the schools. Some of the policies were better than others, but each had security policies. When questioned, school authorities stated that there were policies that were not followed. For some reason, it seemed as though some felt that this settled everything, though I was left with many questions: * Are the procedures written in light of actual practices/are they practical? * Who is responsible for verifying that policies and procedures are followed? * How is accountability ensured? * What is the personal consequence of causing a security breach? * How are the policies and procedures communicated, and how can we be sure that the involved parties understand them? * What are you doing to make sure that these kids are safe, both now and in the future? * How are updates communicated?

You can use these questions to consider the effectiveness of the security policies and procedures for your business as well. (There are many kinds of policies and procedures; this discussion focuses on security.) Many people view policies and procedures as an unpleasant set of paperwork that is at times needed for regulatory or legal reasons. However, policies and procedures should be meaningful roadmaps to better business practices.

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