Security services for multinational companies in Egypt – Middle East Security

Interview with Khaled Abd Elghany, Senior Security Consultant of Middle East Security

Let’s start with an overview of the current security situation in Egypt. What are the main security concerns at the moment?

First of all, the security situation in Egypt is now changing dramatically after the presidential elections. We have been through a long period of instability, which has been exacerbated by the fact that the Minister for the Interior has changed several times over the past three years. All this instability has greatly stretched the capacity of the police force: over the last three years there have been a great deal of operations on the ground, on an almost daily basis. I believe that now we have our new president after the elections, the situation will improve. The current president won the elections with 97% of the vote, so I think that he has a huge amount of support and this will support the government, the police and the military in dealing with all the outstanding security issues. The security situation is therefore improving – we still have some areas, such as the Sinai area, in which the military is operating, but I believe it is better than three or four months ago. In Cairo and other cities we used to have protests every day and a lot of violence, but this has all subsided dramatically now. Of course we still have some security situations, like any other country in the world, but the overall situation is improving now.

Where do you see the current growth or demand for the provision of security services? Is it corporate security, building security, or elsewhere? Where is the current demand?

The area that concerns people in terms of security is mainly goods transportation, especially the transportation of valuable products such as tobacco or oil and gas. As they are being transported from city to city they can be vulnerable to car-jacking or other attacks aimed at stealing the goods, so this has been a major concern for the manufacturers of these products. We have had a lot of requests for this kind of security service over the last two years and we have implemented a new kind of operation specifically to deal with this situation.

Now moving on to talk about Middle East Security, what is your history, what sort of business do you provide, who are your clients, and what has your growth been like since 2011?

Our history starts with a group of ex-military security experts. Our solid experience is based on this asset of human resources rather than equipment. Our staff includes some outright experts who have a long history and experience in the military and the police. These are the people who established this organisation. Over the last six years we have been expanding and improving our services and growing our assets – we started out with 5 acres and now we have around 25 acres. Our headcount is also rapidly increasing in number. Essentially, we started out with a small team of people with experience in the military, then we extended our services to our customers, and then based on the confidence of our customers, we have been recommended to various multinational companies that now trust Middle East Security. These multinationals are starting to trust us more, give us more operations and request more security services from us.

Which countries does Middle East Security now cover?

Middle East Security started with Egypt and then expanded to the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Libya, before the security situation deteriorated there. We don’t operate in Libya now because it requires a different level of security. We are also active in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, North Africa, Tunisia and Morocco. In the past, we have also done some support work in Turkey. Sometimes our customers need multilingual speakers, so at Middle East Security we have speakers of English and French, who are also security experts and consultants. We also employ different modes of operation and do not simply stick to traditional security operations using a guard plus equipment. We use combinations of different teams, for example security train drivers and vehicles that have been inspected for security and qualified as secure; we also have a canine division for our operations and we have armoured security officers. We use equipment such as metal detectors, GPS trackers and a range of these kinds of tools to improve our services and meet corporate standards. We are supporting the different multinational companies in the region, most of them being US- and UK-based multinationals.

In which particular sectors do you work?

We are leaders for security in the oil and gas sector and also have some very big names in the IT world as our customers. Another sector we work in is telecommunications.

Could you please tell us what your strong points are? How do you stand out? What differentiates you from the other security companies?

Our people, our experts—they are very professional and have received excellent training. They also meet the corporate security standards, which is very important, because the security standards differ between different companies and different countries. We know the international standards and we aim to meet them. As a result, we are welcomed by our corporate customers.

As a company, are you looking to expand within the region, or even beyond it?

We are actually already covering most of the region. Our focus is on trying to add more services or improve our existing ones and become more efficient. If we have some spare time, we prefer to give it to our customers and improve our services rather than try to expand in Europe or in other regions. So are strategy is to focus on the quality of services in the Middle East region rather than on expansion.

And what is your vision for Middle East Security? Where would you like to see the company in five years’ time?

We are working hard to position Middle East Security as a multinational security company. At the moment we are only a local company and do not have any international or foreign partners. However, we do not only operate in Egypt, but in other countries as well, so our target now is to find a multinational security company that we can form a partnership with to take us up to the next level – to the international level.

To conclude, what would be your personal vision for Egypt as a country?

Egypt will be back as a leader in the region and security will be implemented in the region. I trust our Minister and our security forces and the military. I can see that things are changing as we speak; I can feel the security improving in the streets and in the country. There may be no such thing as 100% security, but I believe that it will be better than it used to be. Egypt will once again become a safe haven for tourists and other visitors. This may not seem so good for my industry, but then we can help in other ways, with other services and in different fields. For example, before all the unrest in this country began there used to be a lot of movies made here, often near the pyramids. We did a lot of business in this sector. There are also investors coming to start up business here, so they need security for their transportation. There are also private jets bringing celebrities here and they all require security services, and then there is the oil and gas sector too. These kinds of areas will always require some sort of security, so most of the time we will have plenty of business. We would therefore like to see security continuing to improve and we would like a stable situation that is good for Egypt.

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