The Economist recently held its annual high profile sports conference, The GlobalSport Summit 2010. With leading influential figures in world sport gathering for the prestigious event, The Economist recruited the expertise of Integrated Security Consultants (ISC) for its security provisions.

For a second consecutive year ISC successfully managed security for the esteemed event, which took place at London's Grosvenor House hotel. Held annually in association with America's National Football League (NFL), the event played host to a range of high profile delegates from across the industry including senior business leaders. Security is therefore a critical contributing factor towards the conference's success.

Attendees this year included representatives of Arsenal Football Club, the International Olympic Committee, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, The Football Association, ITV and The London Marathon.

ISC's Operation's Manager,Dean Tindall and ISC's NFL Operations Manager, Steve Mack, managed the event, as Tindall explains: "An event of this size requires a great deal of planning. Prior to the conference we had many meetings with the event organisers and the NFL. We also organised a number of meetings with the police, the hotel and its in-house security team to establish and communicate exact security requirements."

ISC's security provision on the day included bag searchers on entrances, information and directional staff, corporate security to guard out-of-bounds areas and Close Protection (CP) drivers for both the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the San Francisco 49er's owner, Dr York.

"We had a large team of SIA trained staff securing the event, including additional close protection trained members of staff that we had on standby as a precautionary measure," explains Tindall.

Members of the press had free roam of the event, with only a few out-of-bounds areas enforced. "Press are naturally inquisitive so we had to pay particular attention to the client designated out–of-bounds areas to ensure the integrity of these zones," Tindall continued. "As always, we made every effort to strike the right balance between providing professional, customer focused high level security whilst also ensuring our presence didn't unnecessarily 'get in the way' of the event proceedings." The conference ended successfully without any incidents or security breaches.