Rand: security environment hurting business.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: Security Beat

At the Rand Corp., a federally-funded research and development think tank, business is suffering, because employees are not allowed to travel to critical areas such as Afghanistan or Indonesia. "There have been a lot of trips postponed in the last year, because it isn't safe," said Cynthia Conlon, director of security for Rand Corp., based in Santa Monica, Calif.

"How do you keep doing business, and how do you keep people and property and assets safe?" she asked. "And I have people very angry with me when I say 'you are going to have to postpone that trip,'" she said.

"We are being asked right now to assist with various public-policy issues in Afghanistan. So I talked to our extraction company, and asked them 'what can you do for me...when the State Department allows us to send people to Afghanistan?' I found that...