Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994                   TAG: 9401180296
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Short

SECURITY SERVICES BOOM

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 percent annually to $103 billion by the year 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 percent 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.

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

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