Silent Safety: Best Practices for Protecting the Affluent

Silent Safety: Best Practices for Protecting the Affluent. By Douglas Kane & Paul Michael Viollis. Worth Publishers, www.silentsafety.net 145 pages; $59.95.

Authors Kane and Viollis have written a useful book in Silent Safety: Best Practices for Protecting the Affluent. The book’s focus is on asset protection of high-net-worth individuals and families. Cofounders of security consulting firm Risk Control Strategies, the authors cite real-life incidents from company case files to illustrate their points.

The book is formatted into 15 chapters, each detailing pertinent areas of exposure facing prominent, visible, or wealthy persons. Each chapter contains a set of practical guidelines presented in accessible terms. For the security professional, the book’s templates and checklists will provide an effective starting point to identify vulnerabilities and initiate mitigating controls. Nonsecurity professionals serving the affluent—asset managers, attorneys, insurance agents, architects—will find the advice in this book helpful as well.

Readers will find lasting value in Appendix A, where the authors offer a “Smart Home Network Architecture Questionnaire” and a point-by-point “Confidential Personal Profile.” The information contained in the Reader’s Reference Guide neatly summarizes each chapter’s relevant action steps.

Early in the book, the authors state, “Time-measured trust is the key ingredient in formulating a successful relationship with the affluent.” Security practitioners might add that the same is true for any client.

Reviewer: John Friedlander is director of security at Jones Lang LaSalle. He also serves as adjunct lecturer in the protection management department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is a member of ASIS International.