The Museum of Anthropology has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of the stolen Bill Reid pieces. Photos and descriptions of each item can be seen on their website by clicking here.
With respect to the obvious security lapse, I’m shocked that the Museum continues, at least publicly, to suggest that their security is ‘appropriate’.
Here is a quote from today’s Sun… “But museum director Anthony Shelton said that elaborate computer program printouts have determined that the museum’s security system did not fail during the heist and that the construction of the building’s layout did not compromise security.”
… elaborate computer printouts? Why would you need that? Given that the items were stolen, isn’t that solid enough proof that the system failed?
Either the system failed or was improperly designed/programmed in the first place (which would still be a ‘failure’). It’s a black or white issue. (Keeping in mind that a ‘security alarm’ is not a ‘security system’).
Protecting a museum is no different, in principle, than protecting a home… there are two fundamental security concepts that must be addressed. First, you need to ensure that you have five minute proofed everything that you are trying to protect and second, you must create redundancies so that there is no single point of failure. That’s it. The rest is implementation.
The fact is, there are many different technologies that could or should have been in place at the Museum to prevent, or at the very least, detect this incident as it was happening. And if they were detected, multiple levels of redundancy to ensure that appropriate response was under way.
I demonstrate a few of those technologies during both of the interviews linked to below…