ASIAL Report: SECURITY 2025 - A Roadmap for the Future

The report, ‘Security 2025', 'A Roadmap For The Future', represents a research project whose findings offers insights into the private security industry in Australia. The report examines the industry now and explores the path to be future-ready.

To develop an understanding of the current Australian security environment, ASIAL engaged the Australian Security Research Centre (ASRC) to create a research report that highlighted trends in the challenges and opportunities facing the Australian security industry.

The report, ‘Security 2025’, offers insight into the industry’s nature and reveals strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) which currently confronts the sector.  The SWOT analysis explores trends and megatrends associated with rapidly changing technology, including its association with critical infrastructure and Australia’s ICT sector.

The report explores ‘what good looks like’ and describes a roadmap for the industry to follow to realise a ‘future-ready' preparedness level.  Future readiness explores the relationship between regulators, private security and consumers, all of which impact the current and future operating environment.  Employing over 180,000 people (of which 153,000 are licenced security personnel), the report estimates that the private security sector generates more than 11 billion dollars in revenue.

The report explores and touches on all sector areas in some depth, including global issues and challenges that will invariably shape the future of Australia’s security industry.  This area visits cyber, terrorism, the labour market, digitisation, climate, and social responsibility.

The report closes by summarising twelve key steps that industry participants can collectively adopt toward a ‘future readiness’.  This approach also includes regulators, clients and consumers recognising the diversity and complexity created by industry silos that lack transparency and flexibility.

The private security industry continues to undergo significant changes in its operational and commercial environment.  COVID-19 created a significant step-change that accelerated cybersecurity awareness through forced technology adoption as remote working shifted the paradigm across all levels of engagement.

A public summary document is available, and the report is available for ASIAL members on their website.

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Commissioned by ASIAL, the report was prepared by the Australian Security Research Centre (ASRC), which employed a multi-method research approach to collect the information that supported the report findings.

Who are the ASRC?

The Australian Security Research Centre (ASRC), was established in 2006 to coordinate and promote independent, collaborative research and discussion on the broad concept of the security of Australia.

The Centre hosts meetings, conferences, fora and other events to engage in dialogue, formal and informal discussions and research.

The Centre seeks to include a wide range of individuals and entities to become involved with the Centre’s work, including academia, the corporate sector, small business, all levels of government, NGOs, professional and industry Institutes/Associations, technical practitioners, and public and private “Think Tanks”.