Big Business in Private Spying

CHICAGO —  The private security industry is booming.

U.S. companies paid an estimated $64.4 billion for guards, alarms, video systems, investigators and other security measures in 1993. They will increase their spending by 8% annually to $103 billion by 2000, said William C. Cunningham, president of the McLean, Va., security consulting firm Hallcrest Systems Inc. and co-author of The Hallcrest Report II: Private Security Trends 1970-2000.

Private security employment is expected to grow at 2.3% annually in this decade, Cunningham said.

“The security industry as a whole is experiencing fairly robust growth,” he said. “It is one of the fastest-growing segments of the service sector.”

Private security spending and employment are rising about twice as fast as public law enforcement spending, Cunningham said.

He said the relatively slow growth in government spending for public protection is one reason companies are spending more. The other main reasons for the private security boom: rising workplace crime, fear of lawsuits, and technological advances that have made security systems less costly and more widely available.

The most dramatic growth has been in computer security spending, up 22% each year since 1990, Cunningham said.

Spending on investigations has grown about 8% per year since 1990, he said. Private investigations accounted for just 1% of total security spending in 1993, he said.