June 24, 2009, Baltimore, Md. -- This morning at the Electronic Security Expo in Baltimore, Md., General Electric's Chief Security Officer Francis X. (Frank) Taylor discussed the role of a lead security executive for a multinational corporation. Taylor's address was the keynote presentation for the tradeshow and served as an inside view into his role, providing insights for the technology vendors, security systems integrators, alarm dealers and monitoring providers in attendance.

To understand his perspective, here's a little background on today's keynote speaker. He has 31 years of military service, rising to the rank of Brigadier General. He served with the United States State Department as Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, and worked with the State Department on counter-terror intelligence following the 9/11 attacks. At General Electric, the parent company to the business unit we all know of as GE Security, Taylor has to protect over 300,000 GE employees worldwide, making the firm's operations roughly equivalent to the size of the United States Air Force. He faces security challenges drawn from having thousands of individual facilities as well as operations in over 100 nations around the world. He has a company reputation and livelihood to protect; General Electric is the only company that has been continually listed on the Dow Jones Index since that index was established. Taylor joined General Electric in March 2005.

In the span of about an hour, Taylor covered a lot of ground, so for the sake of brevity, I'm going to boil it down to some key points he made, but if you ever get a chance, make sure to hang on the every word of chief security officer for a multinational corporation (MNC). There is a lot to be learned.

The CSO position of today has evolved beyond response to threats. Taylor stressed that his main strategy has to be the anticipation of risks. "There is nothing impossible in today's world in terms of a threat to our nation and our people. In our business, things we couldn't image do happen," said Taylor.

While his duties don't include IT security for GE (those duties fall to the CIO at General Electric), Taylor said that, "Your customers are going to be more literate than ever about information security. They will ask your technicians about hackers and how your physical security systems are defended against their efforts." At GE, the security team works with IT closely. Those ties are manifested in employee investigations but also in areas like protection of intellectual property.