ASG's Security Solutions Blog

Network-Based Physical Security for Improved Life Safety

  

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Article provided by Anixter, Silver Sponsor of the 2011 ASG Security Summit & Expo

Readiness and prevention efforts are part of an overall risk management approach to security. This approach includes people, processes and technologies working in conjunction to prevent potential threat events. Security awareness training for on-site personnel is to maintain readiness and a properly trained emergency response team.

To Anixter, the principal concern is life safety, which falls into two main areas: readiness and prevention programs and response efforts.

Readiness and prevention programs focus on monitoring and patrolling the facility as well as incorporating emergency notification policies and systems. By advocating the use of integrated technologies, Anixter gives users the ability to configure an integrated system in order to respond to more sophisticated, multisource events. This event fusion allows users to respond to events that meet their criteria. An effective security system should be a force multiplier by using the technology in conjunction with security personnel to enhance the ability to monitor and control a facility or environment.

A few examples of early warning detection systems used within a preventative security solution are:

• Sensors, such as fiber optic and laser scan sensors can be calibrated to ignore environmental disturbances such as wind and fog, reducing false alarms sent to security personnel.
• Video content analytics offer an additional means of detecting dangerous behaviors, such as an object left behind in an airport, a car parked in a loading zone or a person walking into a restricted area.
• Emergency notification systems for alerting the public must be reliable and multifaceted.
• Blank screen monitoring, a technique that can help to eliminate operator fatigue. Key alerts are sent to a blank screen, which helps to ensure the alert grabs the attention of the operator.

Access to information is critical during a crisis. Situational awareness can be improved with technological advances, especially IP-based physical security. With better integration of systems, and real-time video and data being sent directly to guards, the technology can be considered a force multiplier when the technology itself monitors the grounds, correlates events and verifies alarms. A properly designed, multilayer level of defense can reliably detect intruders and keep guards more reliably informed.

Integrated systems also allow for a much more effective early warning system by eliminating false alarms through the use of more sophisticated multisource event configurations (e.g., tying video to a motion detector to verify a human passed in front rather than an animal). The integration of multiple data points happens much easier with a native IP solution because these systems all communicate over a network using Internet Protocol.

Some major roadblocks that Anixter sees to solving these problems are:

• The lack of standardization throughout the security industry.
• Closed and proprietary equipment.
• The change of equipment failure during a crisis.
• Analog systems that allow for only limited awareness of the equipment and sophisticated scenarios that an integrated system provides.

By participating in The Great Conversation, Anixter is hoping to provide a better perspective on life-safety systems that will better tie security electronics into the business strategy of a company. End-users across all vertical markets are concerned with safety and compliance issues. Evolving technologies make this even more complicated because they add additional vulnerability to the situation. Ultimately, safety and compliance concerns can be better addressed with better designed systems using technologies that, once developed, are force multipliers.