Feeling safe and being safe are often two different things
People can feel protected while exposed, or anxious while perfectly safe. Americans commonly dread dying in an earthquake, yet falls on bathroom floors kill more of them. And a computer running two security programs may be worse off than one running a single program, because the pair can block each other.
Security means protection from, or resilience against, harm. What is protected can be a person, a group, a building, an institution or an entire ecosystem. The word spans many senses: freedom from want, a reliable food supply, solid foundations, a private phone line, a locked cell, even a state of mind. English borrowed secure in the sixteenth century from Latin securus, literally without care or anxiety.
Whether something is secure depends on two things: how hostile its surroundings are and how well it can respond. Means vary enormously, from coercive power such as aircraft carriers, through locks, walls and antivirus software, to diplomacy and long-term policy on economics or ecology. Any measure can help everyone, help one party at another's expense, work only briefly or backfire. Debates over national strategy split along similar lines, between those who favour building strength and those who stress reducing antagonism and meeting basic needs.
Security theater describes measures that change how safe people feel without necessarily making them safer. A house advertising its alarm may deter burglars even if the alarm does not work, and soldiers on city streets after an attack reassure the public whether or not they lower the risk. Recurring concepts across fields include access control, authorisation and assurance, meaning confidence that a measure will do what it should.
The field keeps widening. Human security, backed by the United Nations General Assembly, puts individuals rather than states first. Resource security aims to keep water, energy, food and scarce materials flowing. In March 2012 England published a resource security action plan led by the environment department, and in December 2011 Vince Cable noted that Malthus's prediction of population outrunning food had been proved wrong, though not entirely, pointing to depleted fisheries.
Source: Security
