Shooting at Youtube headquarters highlights the tension between Silicon Valley’s tradition of creativity and the demands for heightened security.

SAN BRUNO >> The deadly shooting at the YouTube headquarters Tuesday highlighted the tension between Silicon Valley’s tradition of free-wheeling creativity and the demands for heightened security in our increasingly unsettled world.

The tech industry has thrived in an atmosphere of collegiality and open communication. Yet experts worry that openness might wind up being squelched if tech firms feel the need to retreat into isolated compounds designed to ward off intruders and violence.

Security concerns at Silicon Valley’s technology campuses go back decades. The industry confronted these same tensions when an Adobe Systems co-founder was kidnapped outside Adobe’s old headquarters in 1992 and four years earlier, when a man draped himself with 98 pounds of guns and ammunition and murdered co-workers in Sunnyvale.

“There are so many things in Silicon Valley that create pressure,” said Gary Dillabough, a managing partner with the Navitas Group and The Westley Group venture capital firms. “We want to make sure we don’t just put people in isolated silos. We need to foster and create an open community.”

Nevertheless, more tech companies may seek ways to heighten security, now that the recent rash of gun violence across the nation has manifested itself here. On Tuesday, industry leaders were not yet willing to engage the discussion, but local experts on security said they expect a vigorous debate.

“This can be a challenge,” said Robert Costa, president of Hayward-based South County Security Services. “People and employees want the freedom to come and go. But employers may want something completely different. Security experts have to help find a balance.”

Security companies regularly scrutinize how to reconcile these often competing goals.

“That balance is an area that we constantly revisit,” said John Spesak, chief executive officer with Security Industry Specialists, a Culver Citybased security company with offices in San Jose. “We have an ongoing dialogue about this balance.” Security Industry Specialists provides security services for numerous Silicon Valley companies.

The tension can put human rights in conflict with security, warned Edward Del Beccaro, a senior managing director with Transwestern, a commercial realty brokerage that manages millions of square feet of offices and other buildings nationwide.

“The challenge is: How do we keep an open system and protect our liberties at the same time we have security systems in place that can identify dangerous people?” Del Beccaro said. “There is going to be a tension between civil liberty, privacy and security. We have to maintain our liberties. But how do you prevent all-too-human people from taking out their anger on others?”

Security concerns of a different sort have never been far from Silicon Valley’s front burner. The industry has long understood the need to guard the precious technology whose theft could damage or even ruin a tech company.

But when issues of human safety arose, the Valley reeled. In 1992, an Adobe Systems executive, Charles Geschke, was kidnapped from a parking lot next to Adobe’s offices in Mountain View. Geschke was freed unharmed a few days later, after being held for ransom in Hollister.

That company later moved its headquarters to a far more secure downtown San Jose high-rise.

In 1988, Richard Wade Farley blasted through numerous offices of military contractor ESL, killing seven co-workers in a shooting spree rooted in his obsession with a female co-worker, who was badly wounded in the shooting but survived.

The rash of fatal shootings around the country will only serve to intensify the discussion about how much security can become too much intrusion, some experts said.

“Given the darkness that many of these recent events have shown all of us, the importance of the dialogue is clear,” Spesak said.