Across Canada, municipalities continue to invest in physical security risk assessments, audits, and technical reviews. These exercises are valuable. They identify vulnerabilities, document risks, and often produce well-reasoned recommendations that help organizations understand where their security posture is exposed or outdated.
Yet a recurring problem persists: security is assessed but not governed.
Once the final report is delivered, findings slowly lose relevance. Staff turnover occurs. Capital plans shift. Incidents happen. Council priorities change. What was once a defensible, risk-informed position gradually becoming outdated until the next incident forces renewed attention.
This gap between assessment and sustained oversight is where many municipal security programs quietly fail.
Why One-Time Security Assessments Plateau
Most municipalities do not struggle with identifying security risks. They struggle with maintaining institutional memory, accountability, and continuity over time.
In practice, this often shows up in predictable ways. Security incidents may recur without meaningful longitudinal analysis to determine whether risk is increasing, shifting, or simply unmanaged. Access control and CCTV systems age in place, operating well past their intended lifecycle, without a clear modernization or replacement roadmap. When auditors or insurers ask how security risks are being managed, documentation exists but it is outdated, fragmented, or no longer reflective of current conditions.
These challenges are compounded by turnover in Facilities, Corporate Security, or Operations roles, where critical knowledge about why certain decisions were made leaves with the individual. The issue is frequently brought to the surface following a public or high-visibility incident, when Council pressure accelerates questions that should have been addressed gradually and proactively.
In these moments, the organization is not starting from zero. Controls exist. Assessments have been done. But the municipality is often operating without a living security governance framework that connects past decisions to present realities.
Security findings decay when there is no stewardship mechanism in place to track how risks were accepted or mitigated, confirm whether recommendations were implemented as intended, and reassess underlying assumptions as operations, threats, or environments change. Without that structure, even well-executed assessments plateau.
Security as an Operating Discipline, Not a Project
Mature municipal risk disciplines such as finance, health and safety, and emergency management are not treated as episodic projects. They are governed functions, supported by defined cadence, oversight, and reporting structures that persist regardless of individual staff changes or political cycles.
Security should be no different.
A resilient municipal security posture depends less on individual technologies and more on how security is governed. Clear lines of ownership, consistent visibility into performance, and decision-grade information for senior leadership and Council matter far more than any single system or control. Without governance, technology becomes reactive, investments become fragmented, and accountability becomes unclear.
This is where Security Program-as-a-Service enters the conversation not as outsourcing, but as structured governance support.
What Security Program-as-a-Service Actually Is
Security Program-as-a-Service (SPaaS) is best understood as a standing advisory and assurance function that supports municipal leadership in governing security risk over time. It is designed to provide continuity, independent oversight, and forensic-level discipline to how security risks are identified, tracked, and reported.
Equally important is what it is not.
SPaaS does not involve guard force management, day-to-day incident response, or the transfer of operational authority. It does not replace internal decision-making or accountability. Instead, it operates as an embedded governance partner, helping municipalities maintain clarity, consistency, and defensibility in their security posture.
The line is drawn clearly:
| SPaaS governs the program; it does not run operations.
How SPaaS Works in a Municipal Context
While tailored to each organization, a typical municipal SPaaS engagement follows a predictable and disciplined structure. Quarterly governance reviews are aligned with Council reporting and budget cycles, ensuring security risk remains visible at the right level and at the right time.
A living security risk register is maintained and updated as conditions change, rather than revisited only when an incident occurs. Vendor and integrator performance is reviewed to confirm that security investments are delivering their intended outcomes, not simply being maintained out of habit. KPI and KRI dashboards translate technical findings into executive-level insight, allowing leadership to see trends, emerging risks, and areas requiring attention.
An annual program refresh provides a formal checkpoint to validate assumptions, reassess threat context, and confirm whether residual risk remains acceptable.
The cadence is predictable. The outputs are decision-oriented. The focus is governance, not gadgets.
What Municipalities Gain
Municipalities using this model gain far more than updated documentation. They gain continuity, even as staff or leadership changes occur. They gain defensibility when questioned by auditors, insurers, or the public about how security risks are being managed.
Early visibility into emerging risks allows issues to be addressed before they escalate into incidents. Institutional memory is preserved beyond individual roles, and leadership is supported with a clear, consistent security narrative they can stand behind.
Most importantly, security decisions shift from reactive to deliberate.
What It Is Not
To be explicit, Security Program-as-a-Service is not a guarding solution, an IT or SOC monitoring service, or an investigations unit. It is not a substitute for municipal authority or accountability.
It is a governance and assurance model designed to help municipalities own their security posture with clarity and confidence.
From Projects to Programs
Security incidents will continue to occur. Public scrutiny will not diminish. Budgets will remain constrained, even as expectations for transparency and accountability continue to rise.
In this environment, the question facing municipalities is no longer whether security risks should be assessed, but how those risks are governed over time. One-time studies, however well executed, capture only a moment in time and are not designed to carry an organization through staff turnover, evolving threat environments, or shifting Council priorities.
Moving from one-time projects to an enduring program model is not a technological shift. It is a governance decision, one that determines whether security remains reactive, or becomes a managed, defensible municipal function.
If your Municipality wants to learn more about this topic , contact me directly at [email protected] for further assistance.
Every municipality is at a different place in their journey, and that’s okay. They have differing levels of asset management maturity, differing data and information and different levels of organizational buy in and support. The best tip is to start where you are and reach out to your local communities of practice (yes they exist across the country, I am most familiar with Asset Management Ontario), the Canadian Network of Asset Managers, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities or any of the numerous asset management training partners across the country. Many have free tools to figure out where you are, your best next steps to gap fill, and tools to help you along that journey.
Enterprise Asset Management is an integral part of the Region of Peel’s strategic and long-term planning practices. Introduced in 2007, the program focuses on developing sustainable plans to maintain the infrastructure over a planning horizon that can be as long as 100 years. Guided by the principle of continuous improvement, these plans support Council’s level of service targets and long-term financial strategies. The Region’s Asset Management program is guided by industry best practice, as well as regulatory requirements. The program is continuously evolving to leverage opportunities and address challenges.
