Real Words or Buzzwords: The Six Ds of Security

(Editor’s note: This article is an installment of the “Real Words or Buzzwords?” series about how real words can become empty words and stifle technology progress.)

For over a decade the Five Ds of Security — Deter, Detect, Deny, Delay and Defend — have served as a cornerstone of physical security perimeter protection. Today, with a powerful sixth D, these principles now apply to every facet of people and asset protection, with comprehensive cyber and physical security safeguards across entire organizations. As threats grow more complex and technologies advance, our security frameworks must also evolve.

Enter the sixth D: Document — a critical mandate to leverage the AI-driven capability to document threats and threat responses in real time. Document provides responders real-time, plain-language situation details as events unfold. Artificial intelligence (AI) can provide individual perspectives appropriate for each responder, accounting for roles, responsibilities and zone of action capabilities. Only recently has maximizing threat response effectiveness in this manner become possible.

Additionally, AI can generate instant time-accurate after-action logs and reports, evaluating incidents against security policies, operations manuals, SOPs, Officer Post Orders and incident history. AI can also recommend enhancements to future responses as well as to policies and procedures, providing an unmatched continuous improvement capability for strengthening security across all domains.

As both an action verb and a mandate, Document is the critical factor propelling security into a proactive, predictive era by enabling AI systems to actively capture and leverage high-quality data across physical, cyber and hybrid domains. Document involves systematically recording, analyzing and retaining security-related data — such as surveillance footage and its AI metadata, access logs, officer daily reports and incident reports — to support post-incident investigation, improve future security measures and ensure compliance with legal or regulatory requirements.

AI Needs High-Quality Contextual Data

Emerging AI-enabled video platform capabilities, like those from Camio, can ingest security manuals, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Officer Post Orders. The platform can apply them in real-time across an entire surveillance landscape or portions of it, to guide threat responses. It can also take text and audio inputs via integrations with various security system components, and incorporate them into its ongoing situational awareness context. (For details on how specific types of AI models are used to achieve ongoing situational awareness see, “How Integrators and Consultants Can Talk the AI Talk”.)

Today, most security manuals and procedures specify the “who, what, when, where and how,” but omit the critical reasoning — the “why.” AI is data driven, and the quality of AI reasoning across all six Ds is highly dependent on the quality of the data it ingests. To make the best use of emerging AI-capabilities will require many security functions to update their manuals, procedures and post orders to include the reasoning factors.

While this may seem like a gargantuan task, tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot can assist with the work involved, including, for example, the creation of Yes/No decision trees from post orders. Besides the fact that Yes/No decision trees facilitate fast and accurate response by security officers, they are also useful for automating portions of security processes and procedures while keeping human-in-the-loop oversight and policy-based approvals.

Integration and Automation

AI-driven systems integration can help by automating SOP-driven actions — such as redirecting personnel or locking down specific building zones — while transparently documenting the reasoning behind each decision to support audits and training. Many physical security functions are already benefiting from AI-based automation and reporting for guard force operations, such as showcased by Allied Universal’s HELIAUS AI-based platform at ISC West 2025.

The HELIAUS capabilities to document security operations as well as provide automated security tour management and Post Order execution are impressive, and their in-house experts can help with maximizing the usefulness of security data.

Documenting randomly is of little to no value. Traditional physical security record-keeping is important but plays only a small part in risk mitigation evaluation and planning. Insightful data collection is key. HELIAUS was designed to integrate rich data, AI and location-aware workflow automation, delivering insightful experiences for security professionals and simplify the oversight of high-caliber guarding operations.

What Are Data-Driven Security Operations?

Data-Driven Security Operations refers to the use of data collection, analysis and insights to optimize all aspects of security operations and administration, including:

• Risk identification and assessment (scenario-based).
• Implementing and maintaining SIX D capabilities (Deter, Detect, Deny, Delay, Defend and Document).
• Resource allocation (budget, personnel, technology and procedures).
• Continuous improvement and accountability (including performance tracking, documenting and auditability).

By integrating AI tools, data science and human expertise, data-driven operations allow security teams to act faster, smarter and more proactively in preventing and responding to security risks situations.

Many organizations using such AI-enabled products don’t necessarily think of it as “data-driven security operations,” and — given how fully tasked most security personnel are — they don’t have a chance to step back and consider the overall potential of the data being collected, which is becoming increasingly important given the continuing emergence of AI-enabled physical security applications.