Security versus defence: dual use from a system requirement perspective

Abstract

The developers of defence technologies in both industry and national laboratories carried their culture for military system development into the evolving security mission, even for systems that are to be used by civilian security personnel. There may be fundamental differences, however, along the way from threat analysis to plausible modes of response to system requirements; differences that lead to a mismatch between the technical solutions that are being proposed and the new customer's interest in them. Hurdles to an immediate transition are to be expected in any enterprise that moves to serve a new customer base. This paper attempts to identify changes of emphasis that can impede the dual use-military and civilian-of the security solutions proposed by developers.