The Chief Protection Officer
Build or Buy
At some point the question stops being whether to do anything and becomes whether to build it or buy it. It is a real decision with a real cost either way, and it is usually made on instinct.
One page. Built to be forwarded.
What building actually costs
Building means bringing capability inside: a person on payroll, a standing arrangement, a function that reports to you. The direct cost is the visible part and rarely the deciding one.
- The salary, and the second person required for any coverage beyond one shift.
- The management burden: this person reports to someone, and that someone is usually you.
- The employment exposure that comes with any direct hire, including how it ends.
- The visibility: a detail is a signal to everyone who sees it, and that signal is not always the one you want.
- The constraint on the family: a detail changes how everyone in the house lives day to day, not only the principal.
What buying actually buys
Buying means retaining judgment rather than headcount. It is cheaper and narrower, and both of those matter.
- Access to an assessment without carrying a permanent function.
- A plan built around your week rather than a person standing in it.
- Coverage that scales up for a specific trip or period and back down afterward.
- No employment relationship, and no signal to anyone who does not need one.
- Skill that transfers and compounds: confidence, capability, and judgment under pressure, none of which ends when the arrangement does.
The questions that decide it
The decision is usually made on the wrong question, which is what other people at your level do. These are the questions that actually separate the two answers.
- Is the threat specific and named, or is it general exposure that comes with the profile.
- How many hours a week would genuinely be covered, honestly counted.
- Would the capability be used, or retained and then worked around.
- What happens to the arrangement when the reason for it passes.
- Whether the added visibility improves the security posture, or only announces that there is something worth guarding.
The answer that fits most principals
Stated plainly rather than left for the reader to infer, because a sheet that refuses to answer its own question is not worth the address it cost.
- A specific, named, current threat points to building, and to doing it now.
- General exposure that comes with the role points to buying, and to a plan rather than a person.
- Most principals reading this are in the second case and have been quietly assuming they are in the first.
If you are not sure which case you are in, that is the question a Discovery Call answers in thirty minutes, and it is a cheaper way to find out than a hire.
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