“Our mission should be to avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable.”
I heard that sentence in a completely different context recently, but it seems to summarise well the mission of the security market.
If a security professional can avoid the unmanageable, (by logic) he or she can manage whatever else happens (the rest). Avoiding the unmanageable involves using whatever deterrents or preventive measures (including various technologies) to keep things from happening that cannot be effectively dealt with.
On the other hand, by managing the unavoidable, a security professional can minimise the impact of that which is inevitable. In the security context, this might include approaches to emergency response or disaster management. It’s about being prepared. “Avoiding the unmanageable” in security parlance is called prevention. “Managing the unavoidable” is called mitigation.
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