Securing the Olympic compound has never been an easy task. In this day and age of constant unprecedented security threats, and considering the British organizational incompetence in terms of security personnel – it becomes mission impossible.

1. Securing the Olympic compound has never been an easy task. In this day and
age of constant unprecedented security threats, and considering the British
organizational incompetence in terms of security personnel – it becomes mission
impossible.
As far as wars and terror threats are concerned, 2012 is probably and unfortunately
rated right there at the top. This fact alone should have forced The United Kingdom to
take the security issue a lot more seriously. Instead, they chose to focus on building
the compound and taking care of the athletes, and not on training a professionally
qualified security squad.
Once the company handling the cleaning and maintenance duties, has taken upon
itself to hire 14,000 security guards, and later on with just a few days left before the
opening ceremony, announces she failed in doing so – you can be certain that the
entire planning process was flawed right from the get go.
The training and qualification process of the security guards should have started
months ago. They should have been recruited a long time ago, spending the last six
months in training and simulation. The current situation clearly reflects upon the
organizer's incompetence in terms of securing the world's most illustrious event.
After the recent scandal has erupted, the British government decided to solve the
crisis by relying on soldiers that had just returned from Afghanistan. Such a decision
is virtually an own goal because a patrolling soldier in Afghanistan simply does not
possess the necessary skills required to serve at the Olympic compound.
The soldiers are accustomed to real-time conflicts, looking for suspicious behavior
typical of the place they were situated in. Tracking possible threats among mostly
European crowd is obviously not the same. Forcing them to face such a scenario can
result in grave consequences.
Not learning from the past
The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre has unfortunately proven to all of us that
terrorists are always looking for this one opportunity to infiltrate the Olympic village
and to cause as much harm and damage as possible. They carefully study every
potential breach and do all in their power to exploit it.
In addition, we can also assume that the people already recruited for the job are not
qualified professionals. If the company in charge of the recruitment and hiring
mission has only just announced its inability to do so, it is safe to say that they have
already tried to reinforce their forces at any cost. The reinforcement squad obviously
includes some people that don't have any security related experience.
I believe that the only possible and worthy solution would be to bring over security
experts and trained professionals from The United States and other countries. All the
security guards arriving must be well trained and qualified in order to address and
neutralize any possible threats. They should all replace the Afghanistan veterans
whose level of training isn't suited for securing a supermarket at the suburbs – let
alone the Olympic compound.

2. Author: Beni Tal, CEO at the Israeli Security Company, Bts-Security