Script Analysis for Security Professionals: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

This chapter positions script analysis as a useful tool to help security practitioners design and upgrade preventive and protective controls in an organisational context. It provides a brief introduction to the script concept and its key attributes and presents the approach as a pragmatic means to analyse the process that offenders go through in the commission of a crime, to pinpoint opportunities for preventive intervention and to identify a fuller range of risk mitigating measures to choose from. In addition to providing some documented examples of how the approach has been applied in practice, it highlights some recent advances in script analysis and some suggested areas for improvement.24