Reposted from The Local

Thieves held up the Centrale Montemartini museum in the south of Rome on Sunday, making off with some €10,000.

Two men armed with handguns approached the ticket office at around 5 pm, while a few visitors were still queueing to enter, Rai News reported.

One of the robbers aimed his gun at a member of staff while the other forced another employee to lead him to the museum's safe. The thieves dragged the safe to the exit, where a third accomplice was waiting in a get-away car.

No one was reported injured. 

Police are using witnesses' account and CCTV footage to try to identify the men, whose faces were covered for the heist. 

The Centrale Montermartini was closed on Monday as usual. Housed inside a former power station in the industrial-turned-trendy neighbourhood of Ostiense, the public museum displays ancient sculpture and artefacts that belong to the municipality of Rome. 

Nothing was stolen from its collection in Sunday's robbery. 

More daring art heists in Italy have seen thieves make off with works worth millions of euros. In 2015, a gang stole masterpieces by Rubens and Tintoretto from a museum in Verona with the help of a security guard, while several precious paintings have been snatched from churches. 

And in January, jewels worth several thousands of euros and owned by Qatar's ruling family were stolen from a show at the Doge's Palace in Venice. 

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Reposted from the Salmon Arm Observer

Sometime last week a thief rolled away with two pieces of Princeton’s heritage – carriage wheels that have long been part of the outdoor display at the Princeton and District Museum.

A reward is being offered for information leading to the return of the bright red wheels, and museum board president George Elliott is puzzled.

“What was the point?” he asked in an interview with The Spotlight. “What message are you trying to get across? It really wasn’t a well executed plan to steal something so high profile.”

The wheels, which were chained to a railing, likely disappeared sometime between April 4 and April 5, and museum directors were tipped to their disappearance by a historical society volunteer.

Elliott admitted he hadn’t noticed they were gone, when he entered the building Thursday. “Well, you know how it is sometimes, when you walk by something 300 times.”

Elliott said he can’t imagine what someone would do with the stolen artifacts.

“It’s not likely someone is suddenly going to put it on Princeton Buy and Sell and you’re not going to see it in the Black Press [classifieds.]”

While RCMP have been contacted, Elliot said he is sure the board is more concerned with recovering the wheels than with punishing an offender.

The theft has also been reported on Facebook.

“The pressure is out there locally. If it was somebody local who chose to ‘borrow’ them and they would choose just as quietly to return them then everything would be done,” he said.

“If they were to anonymously show up on the front steps I don’t think we would be terribly upset. In fact I think we would be quite happy.”

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Reposted from 1075KOOLFM

A fire at the Simcoe County Museum did about $50,000 in damage, while Springwater Fire Services is being credited for minimizing the damage. The fire was reported around 2:00 Saturday afternoon, with 37 firefighters responding to the Highway 26 facility. Everyone had already evacuated safely before emergency crews got there, and thermal imaging was used to find the flames within the walls and ceiling of the building. 

The fire was knocked down within 40 minutes, while the cause has been listed as accidental due to ongoing construction activity at the museum.  

The fire damage is reported to be a small section of the Living and Working gallery’s military section, with one WWI billboard suffering some water damage, with some minor smoke damage scattered among nearby exhibits.

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Reposted from ABC News

 France has flagged more than 78,000 people as security threats in a database intended to let European police share information on the continent's most dangerous residents — more than all other European countries put together — according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

A German parliamentarian, Andrej Hunko, was the first to raise the alarm about potential misuse of the Schengen Information System database in a question to his country's Interior Ministry about "discreet checks" — secret international checks on people considered a threat to national security or public safety. He questioned whether and why different countries seemed to apply very different criteria.

"The increase in alerts cannot be explained by the threat of Islamist terrorism alone. Europol reports a four-digit number of confirmed foreign fighters, yet the increase of SIS alerts in 2017 is several times that," Hunko said in a statement late last month when he released the Interior Ministry response to his query.

That response included a spreadsheet detailing for the first time how many people were flagged for checks by each European country last year — more than 134,000 in all.

"This could mean that families and contacts of these individuals are also being secretly monitored. It is also possible that the measure is being used on a large scale for combatting other criminal activity," Hunko said.

The number of French entries by police and intelligence agencies "indicates a misuse" of the system intended to monitor dangerous criminals, he added.

The overall Schengen database — which is separate to the Europol database and far more widely used — forms the backbone of European security, allowing police, judicial authorities and other law enforcement to immediately check whether a person is wanted or missing, or a car is stolen, or a firearm is legal, for example. The database was checked 5 billion times in 2017 alone, according to the director of the EU-LISA agency, Krum Garkov.

But a relatively unknown provision in European law allows countries to flag people for the "discreet checks" — allowing law enforcement in one country to quietly notify counterparts elsewhere of a person's location and activities. Use of the system — intended for individuals who pose a threat to national security or public safety — has expanded enormously since Islamic State extremists attacked Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016, from 69,475 in 2015 to 134,662 last year, according to data from EU-LISA and Germany.

If someone is flagged for a check, their name will come up for any law enforcement official who has stopped them anywhere in Europe — whether trying to cross an external border or running a red light. In the entry, the requesting country can ask for a subsequent action, ranging from simply reporting back their location, vehicle, and traveling companions to detaining them immediately for arrest.

The checks, unlike arrest warrants, expire after a year, although Garkov said countries are notified of pending expirations and can renew them at will.

But vast disparities in its use by individual countries raise questions about both the effectiveness of the tools and the criteria countries are using to enter people into the system.

With 78,619 entries by 2017, France makes up 60 percent of the requests. Britain, with nearly the same population and 16,991 people flagged, comes in a distant second. Germany, Europe's most populous country, had 4,285 people flagged last year, according to the Interior Ministry data.

To put the French number in perspective, the country's intelligence chief, Laurent Nunez, said late last year that France had recorded 18,000 people as suspected extremists, and considered 4,000 of those to be highly dangerous. The Interior Ministry did not respond to requests to comment about the criteria for discreet checks. CNIL, the government data protection agency, said the 78,000 entries covered every person that France wanted flagged for any reason.

Like the U.S. "no fly list," people can only learn by inference whether they are flagged for a discreet check.

"People are not informed about the existence of this alert, which makes sense. But at the same there needs to be a proportionality assessment," said Niovi Vavoula, a legal scholar at Queen Mary University of London who studies the use of the database. "If certain member states are introducing alerts en masse to the system, this needs to be flagged as a problem."

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Reposted from The NY Times

A new illustrated book about the theft of $500 million worth of artwork from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum went on sale Monday.

The 37-page book "Stolen" was created in response to visitor requests for more information about the 13 pieces stolen in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, by two men posing as Boston police officers.

No one has been charged and the theft remains the largest unsolved art theft in history.

The thieves tied up two guards then spent 81 minutes in the museum before absconding with Vermeer's "The Concert," Rembrandt's "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" and Manet's "Chez Tortoni," as well as a Chinese beaker and a Napoleonic eagle ornament.

The book includes images and the background of each of the works as well as an overview with before and after photos of the galleries from which they were removed.

"Our intention for this book, with its images of the stolen art, is to help keep these masterworks present until we can celebrate their return," museum director Peggy Fogelman writes in the foreword.

The book also includes an essay by museum security director Anthony Amore, who reminds readers of the $10 million reward for information that leads to the recovery of the art.

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Reposted from The Guardian

The world’s oldest-known bridge, an ancient Sumerian structure in Iraq, is to be used by the British Museum as a training site to teach two groups of female archaeologists the skills to restore the country’s Islamic State-ravaged heritage.

After a conflict that saw Isis jihadists destroy large parts of Iraq’s archaeological heritage – including the historic sites at Nimrud and Nineveh – the museum will in April begin a training program for eight women from the Mosul area, most of whom have been living as refugees.

The training will be split between London and the Tello site in southern Iraq, near the city of Naseriyah and home to one of the world’s oldest civil engineering projects, the Sumerian bridge at the entrance to the 4,000-year-old city of Girsu, which is the focus of the project.

Although unaffected by Isis’s predations, Girsu – first discovered in the 19th century – has been damaged through erosion and neglect.

Significant as the first major Sumerian site to be excavated, in works that continued until the 1930s, Girsu was occupied from the early dynastic period (2900-2335BC) until 200BC, and at its height was a major administrative center.

Sebastien Rey, the British Museum’s lead archaeologist both on the bridge and for the training project, believes experience in restoration and research at the bridge site can be used as a safe pilot for Iraq’s Isis-damaged heritage, not least because of the site’s topographical similarity in layout to Iraq’s other great archaeological sites.

“There is little doubt that this is the world’s oldest bridge,” he told the Guardian. “It is a huge monument that was originally first excavated before the second world war. When we were finally able to, we were able to confirm it was a bridge built over an ancient canal, which we could confirm from alluvial deposits and the use of a drone.”

The bridge, built out of mud-fired bricks, was also highly religiously significant as part of a processional route that led to the city’s main plaza and temple.

“It was more than 40 meters long and eight to 10 meters wide and was one of the main access points to the ancient city of Girsu, which was one of the first cities in the world. It was the entry point for pilgrims during religious festivals – including the city’s tutelary god, Ningirsu – and so was an important symbolic feature.”

The Tello site, said Rey, has significant advantages for the program launched two years ago to train Iraqi archaeologists.

Aside from its similarity to other major Iraqi sites, its location midway between Baghdad and Basra in a Shia majority area in the south of the country saw it insulated from much of the violence and destruction that followed the capture by Isis of large parts of northern Iraq.

Prominent among sites severely damaged by Isis was the ancient site of Nimrud, about 20 miles south of Mosul, which like Girsu was founded more than 3,300 years ago, where Isis not only destroyed the giant winged bulls that once stood sentry but left the site vulnerable to looters.

“According to the official figures of the Iraqi state board of antiquities 70% of Nineveh, in Mosul province [once the center of Isis’s self-declared caliphate] was destroyed. In Nimrud we are talking about 80%, while there was also huge destruction too in Nebi Yunis,” said Rey.

“A lot needs to be done to assess damage at those sites, which means that the fact that local architects can work in safety southern Iraq makes Tello an ideal site for training for what will be required at places like Nineveh and Nimrud.”

Although the museum has already trained several all-male groups at Girsu, the next two groups will comprise only Iraqi women.

Among those who have been through the scheme is Mehdi Ali Raheem, a curator in the Iraq Museum, who spent nine weeks in London before continuing with field work at the site in Iraq.

“It is really important for the future. The conservation of the bridge and the preparation of site panels to explain our work to a wider audience will help bring tourists back to our country – which was the cradle of civilization – first from the Middle East, and then international tourists,” he said.

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Reposted from Security Management

​The concept that small acts can have large ramifications is called the butterfly effect. The phrase, based on a thesis by American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz, refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings could create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately delay, accelerate, or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in another location.

The level of awareness exhibited by security personnel can have a butterfly effect on an active assailant's perception of risk. Active shooter attacks often end when the perpetrator is apprehended or killed by law enforcement, or when the attacker commits suicide—rarely do assailants run or escape. Having security guards onsite may mitigate the chances of an attack, but this type of embedded response is no guarantee that the attacker will be deterred or stopped. 

In the case of the Orlando Pulse Nightclub massacre, for example, there was a uniformed Orlando police officer onsite providing security. At Mandalay Bay where a gunman opened fire on the crowd below, killing 59 people, a security officer exchanged gunfire with the assailant during the massacre. And most recently, an armed school resource officer was on campus during the February shooting that killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

However, security officers can also focus on the events that occur before an attack. People who intend to commit violence often give themselves away by their physical appearance or behavior. By engaging people with simple hospitality principles, a security officer is more likely to observe warning signs. This enhanced awareness allows the guard to implement security methods that may deter the attacker.

Even when the worst-case scenario occurs, a security officer's situational awareness is critical. Early detection enables officers to respond more quickly and help others by providing instructions that can mitigate the attack. By observing physical and behavioral cues, acting upon concerns, and implementing effective response methods, unarmed guards can help prevent or mitigate active assailant attacks.​

Preattack Indicators

Because most attacks represent the killer's first and last act of violence, the assailant often exhibits telltale signs of the incident to come. With little to no prior criminal record or experience in extreme violence, they may show behavioral and physical indicators that give their bad intentions away. Looking out for these early warning signs, or preattack indicators (PAINs), can alert the security practitioner to potential trouble and possibly thwart attacks.

PAINs are physical actions that include movement patterns, carried objects, appearance, or dress. They are also behavioral elements, such as facial expressions or demeanor. PAINs do not automatically indicate danger, because they can be consistent with perfectly innocent explanations. By carefully and prudently observing people who are determined not to be a danger, the officer can learn how to better distinguish future threats.

In the rare instances when PAINs are associated with imminent danger and immediate action is required, awareness will greatly improve response, because the element of surprise that may elicit the fight-or-flight response is removed.

Normalcy bias. Trying to look for someone in a crowd who could be an attacker is like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. Since active assailant attacks are rare, there is a tendency to discredit PAINs in favor of the norm. Effective security requires a certain level of paranoia that avoids the "it can't happen here" mentality.

Establishing a thorough understanding of what is normal allows the guard to have a baseline. Then the security officer remains alert and vigilant during normal activities, and can easily transition to a heightened state of alert when a change occurs to the baseline.

Customer service. Proactivity on the part of the guard is not to be confused with aggression, because customer service is still a priority. Security should view each person as a customer, not a suspect, until a significant change to the baseline occurs. Professional and nonthreatening behavior from security is more likely to elicit cooperation.

In customer service, the 10-5 Rule is a gold standard. The rule states that when the staff member is within 10 feet of guests, staff should make eye contact and smile to acknowledge them. Within five feet of a guest, a sincere greeting or friendly gesture should accompany the eye contact and smile.

The 10-5 Rule reminds others of the presence of a professional security force while keeping the security officer engaged with visitors.

Making eye contact with a person is an effective first step to determine if a basic level of mutual trust exists. At around 10 feet, make brief eye contact with a pleasant demeanor, then scan for PAINs. (See infographic, page 41.)

If PAINs are observed, engage the person in a focused conversation. In this context, professionalism is key. A focused conversation should not resemble interrogation.

Active engagement. The purpose of a focused conversation is to determine if the person poses a risk. A polite "where are you heading?" to learn that person's trip story can be an effective conversation starter. 

There are two types of trip stories—past and future. A past trip means the person has completed the purpose of the trip, and a future trip means the person is on their way to a specific place. This basic framework helps the officer determine whether the trip story is verifiable by providing specific details of sights seen and actions taken. A vague, unverifiable trip story does not indicate imminent violence, but it does indicate deception.

Officers should expect occasional negative reactions and be prepared to encounter individuals who refuse to cooperate. Appropriate measures should be taken to deal with such persons, including asking for another officer to help and continuing to question the individual.

Low-risk groups. Just as there are universal indicators of imminent danger, there are groups of people that, absent an overt hostile act, can be statistically discounted as a threat. These low-risk groups can be removed from the 10-5 Rule, including families, children, people older than 70 years, known guests of the facility, and people known and trusted by the officer.

High-risk people. After the focused conversation, those not eliminated as a possible threat must be monitored. Ideally, the person can be denied access and escorted out of the area. If not, supervisors need to be alerted and the person should be followed by an officer. Using video surveillance is also a possibility. The officer should be prepared to document their concerns and articulate—based on PAINs and the focused conversation—why the person was considered a threat.

If it becomes apparent that the person is dangerous, immediate action should be taken. The first step is to alert others and request assistance. The following actions will be based upon the perceived threat and the location. Options may range from initiating heightened security procedures and observing the subject to an immediate evacuation of the area.​

Attack Response

Regardless of the specific factors leading up to the situation, it is imperative that security officers understand how to respond to a violent attack. 

Some responses require compartmentalizing occupants away from the assailant, which is associated with the lockdown concept. However, not all situations call for these measures. Lockdown or compartmentalization is a valid tactic, but it lacks the flexibility needed to adequately mitigate all active assailant attacks. A lockdown does not help people in areas that cannot be secured or those having direct contact with the perpetrator. In an active assailant attack, these are the people at the greatest risk.

Not every human-based threat or intrusion requires Run. Hide. Fight. decisions. Under these far more common nonactive shooter events, using the word "lockdown" can cause a high percentage of occupants to falsely assume there is an active shooter, creating unnecessary panic and anxiety. Instead, these scenarios require heightened security procedures.

Heightened procedures. Situations requiring heightened security can range from a threat of school or workplace violence to civil unrest. What measures are taken to increase security depend on several factors, including the nature of the threat, the mission of the facility, the architecture and layout of the facility, and law enforcement presence or response time.

Based on these factors, leaders must determine which measures are most prudent given the circumstances, and security officers should be prepared to guide facility occupants.

When necessary, guards should communicate the fact that security has been heightened in simple language, such as "Attention, guests: we have a situation that requires heightened security. Please move inside a secure location." These messages get people's attention without causing unnecessary panic. Additional information can be shared as needed.

Attacks. All leading U.S. federal preparedness and response organizations, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Justice, recommend the option-based Run. Hide. Fight. approach. This recommendation is not limited to U.S. government agencies—Run. Hide. Fight. can be applied to many organizations and settings.

When deciding which option is best, determining whether the guard has direct or indirect contact with the shooter is essential. Direct contact means there are no barriers between the guard's location and the attacker, and the assailant is close enough to pose immediate danger.

With indirect contact, the attacker is inside or near the facility or general area, but distance or barriers delay the attacker's ability to cause harm.

After determining the level of contact, the survival options of the protocol are applied. The guard should also be prepared to advise those around him or her on which option to choose and to assist others.

Given their large presence at events, facilities, schools, and other venues, both armed and unarmed security officers play a critical role in preventing and mitigating active assailant attacks.

Because the killer is likely to have a target location for the attack in mind—whether it be a school cafeteria, concert, or church service—the presence of trained, engaged, and aware security can disrupt the attack.

Unarmed guards have a variety of tools at their disposal to protect the public and mitigate potentially dangerous situations. With a combination of active observance, engaged conversation, and–when necessary–heightened security procedures, security personnel can serve as a major deterrent against those who intend to commit harm.  

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Reposted from The Busselton Mail

The cause of the fire at Busselton’s Old Buttery Factory remains unknown.

The March 27 blazed caused approximately $400,000 damage to The Busselton Museum and destroyed precious artifacts on the building’s second floor.

Busselton Historical Society president Sandra Johnston told the Mail the fire claimed the museum’s most valuable historical collection.

“All the wedding dresses are gone as is the cape Stewart Bovell was knighted in and the furniture in the main upstairs room,” she said.

“The other three rooms with the nursery, music room and kitchen are all badly smoked damaged.”

Ms Johnston said the loss was like a death in the family for the volunteers.

“For the first few days everyone was in tears,” she said.

“It was horrid, we are exhausted but we are thankful more damage wasn’t done.”

More than 30 firefighters from Busselton, Dunsborough and Bunbury were involved in saving the Busselton icon.

Ms Johnston praised the volunteer firefighters for their quick response to the situation.

“Without them there would be no museum, and that is not an exaggeration,” she said.

“They saved the museum by containing it to the one room.

“I can’t say enough about them, downstairs is in exceptionally good condition, with almost no damage and that is down to their skills and efforts.”

The City of Busselton will work with museum board and volunteers as well as the members of the Busselton Pottery Club who share the Butter Factory premises, to progress a schedule of works aimed at reopening the building as soon as possible.

The first step would be to ensure the building was safe and this would include an asbestos contamination risk assessment.

City of Busselton mayor Grant Henley said council shared the upset of museum personnel and the broader community and would do all it could to progress repair work and ensure the building was operational in the shortest possible time frame.

The Old Butter Factory recently celebrated its 100 years with an official ceremony for former workers and families and a community open day.

WA minister for culture, arts and heritage David Templeman, who attended the centenary celebrations, has expressed his sadness to Ms Johnston and the Busselton Historical Society volunteers.

“This is a significant loss for the local community and the state as a whole,” he said.

“I have asked the Western Australian Museum and State Heritage to assist in any way possible.”

Ms Johnston thanked the community for the outpouring of support and offers of donations.

A Go Fund Me page will be set up in coming days.

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Reposted from TeleSur

The Government of Venezuela recovered 196 cultural heritage pieces in 2017, which were extracted illegally from Costa Rica for auction in the U.S.

Venezuelan institutions and authorities were commended Thursday for their role in the fighting against the illicit trafficking of archaeological and cultural objects in Venezuela and abroad by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Speaking after the commendation was received Venezuela’s Ministry of Culture, Ernesto Villegas said: “Venezuela’s voice is heard with respect at the World’s Heritage Center, where the country’s good practices and contributions to the implementation of UNESCO conventions are recognized.”

In a video published through Villegas’ Twitter account, Omar Vielma, president of the country's Institute for Cultural Heritage, said Venezuela gave a “global example of how to protect our cultural objects, and we took action last December by recovering and repatriating to Costa Rica 196 pieces seized in Venezuela as the result of the policies that our committee against illicit trafficking of cultural goods has… We were asked to bring the documented experience of how we repatriated these goods to the next meeting.”

Villegas also announced that Venezuela has submitted an application for the tradition of the Blessed Palm of Chacao and Margarita to be considered as part of the country’s Intangible Cultural Heritage.

He also requested the support of Unesco’s General Director Audrey Azoula in Venezuela’s quest to have the Piedra Kueka, a large stone that forms part of the Pemon people’s heritage and myths, returned by Germany.

A German artist took the stone in 1998, and it now resides in the metropolitan Tiergarten Park in Berlin as part of an installation titled “Global Stone.”

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Reposted from Security Now

YouTube employees fled the company's headquarters in terror last week, as a woman, now identified as Nasim Najafi Aghdam, shot and wounded three people in the company's outdoor courtyard before killing herself.

It's not clear what drove Aghdam to target the company's headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., although the New York Times noted that she had criticized YouTube's policies.

At first blush, this tragedy may come across as something that only a company's physical security team should handle. But as more active shooter episodes erupt across the nation this year from the Parkland, Fla., attack that killed 17 high school students to the Yountville, Calif., veterans home attack that resulted in the deaths of three people and the shooter, more attention may be paid to the long-standing debate about merging IT security teams and physical security teams into one consolidated department, according to several experts.

"Most businesses today are relying on human intervention in order to mitigate these situations and security alerts. The use of technology to augment these situations is more important than ever," Tony Ball, vice president and general manager of identity and access management for Entrust Datacard, told Security Now.

Technology has now enabled people to have a physical and digital footprint, Ball added. And these footprints indicate whether or not a person should be in a certain location or in a certain situation. These footprints, as a result, can alert security -- either physical or IT-based -- to "shut down" an access point, whether a physical door or a system, Ball said.

Active shooter challenges
In the case of April 3 YouTube incident, the shooter is believed to have entered an open, less secure area where employees could gather to eat their lunch. Because a secured, physical perimeter was not likely breached, there would have been no security alerts to send to the IT security team, who in turn could have sent the physical security staff to investigate, security experts theorized. 

However, Ball notes there may be situations that do arise where an active shooter enters an area that is more secure and that is the time converged IT security and physical security teams would greatly benefit being part of the same team.

For example, an active shooter is more than likely carrying a mobile device. This device can say a lot about the shooter, such as where the person has been, whether or not person has been in a certain location previously, or whether or not the person exhibited certain behaviors, Ball explains.

Once a security team knows "who" this person is via their digital footprint, the IT security team can choose to increase or decrease their risk level based on these characteristics, Ball said. An integrated security team can either physically send security personnel to intervene in the situation or disable access privileges via connected IT security and physical access systems, he added, noting that the device can help security personnel locate an individual based on global location services embedded in the device.

Additionally, if biometric measures are in place, when a known, or unknown person, enters a perimeter, cameras can detect if the individual should be there or not, Ball said. If they are allowed certain access privileges, the security team can allow entry. If the individual is not supposed to be in that location, the security team can "challenge" the request for access by increasing the physical or digital security measures.

Other tools and processes organizations may want to consider for their converged security teams are a common identity management system, video analytics and a single governance body for the merged security team, according to Cisco Systems' white paper "Why Integrate Physical and Logical Security?"

A long debate
Both physical and IT security departments have been talking about convergence for more than ten years, Michael Gips, chief global knowledge and learning officer for ASIS International, told Security Now. He noted the use of physical security devices getting placed routinely on corporate networks accelerated the discussion of convergence.

And in 2010, ASIS's CSO Roundtable, which is now called the CSO Center, found 10% to 15% of large companies they surveyed had reported that they fully converged their IT security and physical security departments. That percentage, however, largely did not change when a subsequent survey was conducted in 2014, Gips said.

Several issues, however, are preventing more organizations from merging their security teams.

"IT and physical security professionals have complementary skills, which makes convergence seem to be a logical solution," Gips said. "But both sides think they should be running the converged department."

Some team members are also worried that the word "converged" is synonymous with lay-offs, which is a threat, he explained. And lastly, IT security and physical security professionals often report up through entirely different lines, Gips says. IT security reports into IT, operations or administration departments, while physical security team members tend to report into legal, facilities or human resource departments, says Gips.

"Convergence, thus, would require organizational surgery, so to speak," he says. 'But a lot of security people think wide-scale convergence is inevitable because of the presumed cost savings to companies."

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