An important part of any business is to protect one’s assets. Be they the stocks or goods one sells, the compensations one receives from their sales and from debtors, or even confidential information with regards to the business itself, these are all assets which need to be protected from both theft and accidental loss.
The field of security which is concerned with one of these two sides – that is, the prevention of theft – mainly lies around the concept of tampering. Tampering is basically defined as any unauthorized intrusion upon a good or place. The main ideal is of course to prevent theft – or to make any good or item tamper-resistant (TR). However, no good can ever be tamper-proof (i.e. the 100% prevention of theft is considered practically impossible). Therefore, the next important step in theft prevention is to provide proofs of tampering – that is, to make a good or item tamper-evident (TE). Both these forms of security are a type of physical security that have been used since ancient times. Below described are some common forms of both TR and TE:
• Signatures – the oldest method to prevent theft was the use of signatures. As nearly unique and hard to imitate forms of writing, signatures were used as proof of the legitimacy of an object or good.
• Seals – moving onto more advanced techniques, seals became a newer form of theft prevention. Starting from the use of wax seals in official and diplomatic letters among the upper social classes to the plastic security seals Sydney used by businesses today to discourage the tampering of a good or item, seals have been useful in preventing both theft and duplication or forgery.
• Packaging – nowadays, the advent of technology has made it possible to create packaging for goods capable of retaining proofs of tampering. This has discouraged theft as well as become helpful in providing evidence in case of tampering. Tamper bags, as well as forms of labelling (i.e. RFID tags) are among the forms of TE packaging.
Besides these forms of physical security, the increased use of computers in the realm of businesses has led to the need of digital forms of security too. Among the digital forms of security that are being used by companies to protect their data and goods are the use of security software and security solutions like encryption. However, in the case of computers, the mere use of digital security methods is not sufficient – as the possibility of stealing or tampering with data stored on hard drives and other secondary storages remains. Therefore, physical security methods are also needed to ensure the efficiency of digital security methods.