SIA New Member Profile: Security Advisors Consulting Group

New Security Industry Association (SIA) member Security Advisors Consulting Group, LLC, is a security consulting practice that specializes in optimizing the security of health care, educational institutions and other open environments. The company is headquartered in Strum, Wisconsin, and serves clients across the United States and internationally.

SIA spoke with Drew Neckar, founder and president of Security Advisors Consulting Group, about the company, the security industry and working with SIA.

Tell us the story of your company.

DN: I had served as chief security officer (CSO) for several companies and earned a reputation for excelling at “turnarounds” and reinventing underperforming security programs. With this, I found myself typically working at each employer for three to five years while realigning the direction of their security program and putting a team in place that could manage it moving forward. Once those teams were in place, I would find myself getting bored and start looking for the next turnaround opportunity. This led naturally to consulting, where I was not tied down to a single employer and could work with a broad range of companies to help them improve their security programs. As business grew, I reached out to highly competent professionals that I had been able to work with in the past in different roles and brought them on board our team in leadership roles and/or as part of our affiliate network of professionals who assist us on a part-time basis when we run into problems that fit their particular specialized skill sets.

What solutions/services does your business offer in the security industry? And what makes your offerings/company unique?

DN: As an independent consulting firm, we specialize in identifying gaps in our clients’ security programs, quickly deciphering their the root causes and making recommendations that will help them solve these challenges while balancing their security with the needs of their business. Our leadership team has served in CSO roles in companies in a number of industries, including health care, higher education, financial services and hospitality. This experience in multiple niche markets, coupled with the business acumen our leadership has picked up along the way, sets us apart from many of our competitors.

What is something we might not know about your company – or something new you are doing in security?

DN: Right now we are excited about expansion into new markets; we are well established in the U.S., especially in the health hcare and education verticals, but we are always looking for ways to increase our reach and help more companies improve their security programs. We are in the midst of working to grow our presence in the legal cannabis sector, where we feel our experience in retail, health care and other highly regulated industries can really come into play for this exciting new industry. We are also just beginning to take on clients outside the U.S. We have previously worked for some U.S.-based companies that had foreign operations, but 2020 was the first year we began actively exploring providing services to non-U.S.-based businesses. It has been exciting to see the myriad of different challenges security programs face around the globe – not only in their differing threat environments, but also in the cultural expectations and prejudices or their employees and customers.    

What is your company’s vision, and what are your goals for the security industry?

DN: Our impetus is to change the perception of security. There are still far too many businesses that, when you say “security,” think only of the minimum wage guard in the ill-fitting polyester uniform dozing off at their front desk, or of fake cameras they put up in the break room to discourage people from taking lunches out of the shared refrigerator. Security needs to be seen as a risk-driven business enabler that works with the C-suite to develop tools to protect the company’s people and assets while creating opportunities for the company to venture into areas where it may not have been comfortable before. We are hardly the first to push in this direction, and we follow in the footsteps of a great many pioneers in the security industry, but there is still a lot of ground to be gained, and we are working hard to accomplish that goal with each and every one of our clients.   

What are your predictions for the security industry in the short and long term?

DN: As with many other industries, the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) and the increasing capability of “smart” systems are going to widely affect what we think of as traditional security. I would not be surprised if, within the next 10 years, the technology advances to a state where the minimum-wage security guard “doing rounds” by walking from checkpoint to checkpoint has been made obsolete by autonomous drones, robots and smart systems that can diagnose their own problems using AI. What won’t go away is the need for highly trained and specialized security personnel to oversee and program those systems and serve as first responders when a potential issue is identified.  

In the shorter term, in the U.S. the “defund the police” movement and generalized resentment toward law enforcement, coupled with the civil unrest we have experienced recently, are already having the effect of increasing reliance on privatized security to protect people and assets.

What does SIA offer that is most important to you/your company? And what do you most hope to get out of your membership with SIA?

DN: As an independent consulting company, it is important for us to stay abreast of any technological developments in the industry. Security solutions are evolving at such a rapid pace that a large portion of our time is spent learning about new solutions. SIA keeps us connected to manufacturers and integrators who we can leverage to recommend the newest cutting-edge solutions to our clients.

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association.