Security is not a word highly esteemed in the business world, and for a number reasons. Modern society, by and large, holds to the idea that wealth is a product of openness and free exchange. Globalisation is the most widely accepted illustration of this basic axiom. The reverse (inward-looking, or opposing the free circulation of goods, people, ideas or capital) leads inevitably to pauperisation. A tenacious cliché associates security with a rejection of the ‘go-ahead world’. Nothing is more wrong or more dangerous. It is nevertheless the primary obstacle to progress in the concept of economic security amongst the leaders of big business and, at the other extreme, of ‘start-ups’. Security is routinely perceived by directors and managers in the private sector as a brake on business, a way of handicapping the acquisition of markets and the necessary strategic alliances. Talking security means, for example, a rejection of technology transfer or of joint ventures (a very valuable concept in developing Western business activity in China); those who talk security are immediately suspected of urging the installation of cameras in every corridor and office in the company, and the multiplication of security agents on every floor . . . and so on, through the tedious list of communal premises.

Risk is inseparable from openness; the problem is summed up perfectly by Michel-Henry Bouchet: ‘the era of the global economy is the era of Internet, the predominance of turnover is sacred. If it moves, it earns: information, technology, oil and mineral resources, capital, goods and services. With the new communication tools, information is omnipresent, instantly, at virtually no cost. This new transparency is a key element of economic intelligence. It also contributes to market pressure for better corporate governance. But it also nourishes new risk factors, connected with volatility, opacity, rumours, all of which have to be anticipated and absorbed by the analysts and the strategists.'⁽¹⁾ You can’t therefore be open without protecting yourself, unless you are looking for extinction, which would at least constitute a definite outcome, putting an end to any possibility of exchange!

For the business chief to be convinced of the legitimacy of economic security measures, he has to be brought to realise that security is a factor of competitiveness and not either an intolerable constraint on management or simply an extra business cost. It must be pointed out to him that preventive security measures are a way of attenuating the gravity of crises and of facilitating the continuation of business activity. The measures are needed as a defence of the company’s property. In other words, they make a vital contribution to its value.