By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
The Security Market is a little noisy right now. It is hard to differentiate one vendor from another. Steve Foley, the Sr. VP and GM of Americas with Verint Systems, understands this.
“The ongoing focus and priority around integrated security systems that combine traditional loss prevention, AP or security services with IT-based security platforms will be a leading trend with vendors in the security marketplace”, said Foley. “Verint is a top 20 USA software company with 10,000 customers and over 100,000 deployments. Our experience taking complex problems and simplifying the roadmap from analog, to IP, to analytics while integrating video into the back office applications separates us from the fragmented crowd.”
And to Foley, now more than ever, security executives need to be planning a move to open systems. “Our ideal client is a customer with a vision to evolve from a closed architecture analog-based system to open IP-enabled platform; leveraging analytics and data analysis in a scalable fashion over time” said Foley.
Foley and Verint’s unique contribution to the Great Conversation is to underline the importance of the need for security executives to focus on the key performance indicators driving their success. Foley looks for the following characteristics: “Does the customer have a long term vision? Is IT and security involved? Is this a compliance issue or security issue? Is there a need for business intelligence? Is the customer looking for ROI using analytics?”
“The core competency of Verint” said Foley, “is that we deliver ‘actionable intelligence’ to capture, distill, and analyze complex and underused information sources. We turn structured and unstructured data (voice and video) into actionable information. We move beyond putting a working system in place to extracting summarized business intelligence out of the data so executives can measure key performance indicators (KPIs) such as compliance or ROI.”
Serious value focus from a serious player in the industry.
Verint is a worldwide leader in networked video and an innovator in video technology (first digital DVRs, award winning encoders with over 1 million inputs deployed, scalable VMS) providing solutions to government and critical infrastructure, education and corporate enterprises, transportation, retail, banking and a host of other industries. Verint works with integrators, partners and end-users to deploy solutions designed for high availability, low cost of ownership, enterprise scalability, and easy interoperability with business and security systems. Their comprehensive end-to-end product portfolio includes cameras, encoders, decoders, NVRs, mobile DVRs, VMS, storage, network virtualization and servers.
Visit Verint's Virtual Exhibit Hall.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
A company known for its work with optical turnstiles, high security doors, and outdoor perimeter security, is also contributing its voice to the ‘Great Conversation' with some bold statements around the future of corporate lobbies.
Mark Ellsworth, Vice President of Sales for Smarter Security Systems, believes the next generation technology will change the way we think about corporate lobbies. He sees the day when people will move to enter a corporate lobby and will be ‘recognized' by an iris and/or facial scan, automatically triggering an opening of the turnstile. "Nobody needs to touch or enter anything", said Ellsworth. "No prox card. If they are authorized, they enter, and proceed to the elevator. The systems are interoperable, so the elevator dispatches and opens based on the original authorization. If there is a breach of the turnstile, the elevator doesn't open. This will be the most secure and safest lobby in the world!"
Ellsworth believes the future is now. "The technology exists today", said Ellsworth. "If business efficiency is all about the velocity and accuracy of the movement of goods and services, then there is a value proposition to make around the technology today."
Today, most companies are rarely proactive in their approach. "They wait until there is an incident to react", said Ellsworth. "We are attempting to show them that the ROI is pretty straightforward and can help save lives, theft of assets, and the recurring cost of over-staffing guards."
"Lobby guards can get distracted easily", continued Ellsworth. "People can easily slide on by past a guard, or have an employee hold open a door. Once they enter anything can happen."
But the perception of cost is a real barrier. "Prevention is a hard sell to most security professionals", said Ellsworth. "Most of the companies we have worked with are coming off of a security breach from identity theft to human injury and they are just trying to control the damage." Damage would be brand identity, loss of employee confidence, theft or injury.
One of the concepts we discussed, is the use of the integrator in doing a complete assessment around the true cost of lobby safety. One of the concepts being discussed in the ‘Great Conversation' is the use of assessments inside a Security Process Optimization engagement. Ellsworth believes if this can take place the cost of a 24X7 security guard force attempting to prevent breaches and optimizing throughput will be readily evident. "We find that a 12-18 month payback on the initial investment is not unusual" said Ellsworth. "From then on your are making money, in many cases, by just right sizing the guard staff."
Ellsworth's company, Smarter Security Systems, Ltd. is a marketer of advanced electronic security solutions with a common thread...each offers truly unique benefits towards solving a myriad of indoor and outdoor security challenges.
Take a moment to see what else Smarter Security Systems is offering at their Virtual Exhibit Hall Booth.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
One of the main themes of ‘The Great Conversation' is the critical role security plays within the mission and goals of an organization. Creating a highly efficient way to reach into the organization and deliver on that value requires the ability to bridge physical security systems with enterprise systems.
If this can be done, there is an opportunity to impact costs and drive value in such areas as human resources, fatigue management, time and attendance processing, exception management, and workforce compliance issues relating to regulatory issues in key markets. Not to mention shaving time and resource costs from the security budget as well.
Enter RightCrowd: creating world-class, software products that add functional enhancements to existing physical access control systems and converge the physical security silo into the Enterprise, through out-of-the-box integration into ERP systems, such as SAP. RightCrowd products enable corporations to automate many physical security and compliance-related business processes.
With Security Process Optimization becoming a key focus for organizations, creating a partnership with integrators and software companies like RightCrowd to help with stakeholder assessments becomes essential. CIOs, Human Resource Officers and Risk Management Executives can receive tremendous value from an integrated approach using tools like RightCrowd's SureSite suite of products.
How can security executives determine if they are a candidate for this approach? According to RightCrowd's General Manager, Darren Bain, security executives can look to the following as a guideline:
- Large Cardholder population
- Qualifications around site entry needing to be enforced
- Unify identities across Human Resources and Physical Security
- Regulatory Compliance and Safety issues are mandated and must be managed through the work force
- A need to streamline security processes in line with a organizational imperative to do this across all business lines
- Contractor Management is needed
According to Bain, the over-arching value proposition is the desire to drive end-to-end automation of business processes by leveraging their current investments in HR and Security.
"This in turn drives safety and compliance and reduces cost through notifications, automation, visibility and distribution of effort", said Bain. "By automating business processes around access, the organization now has the time, communication, visibility and empowerment to be able to measure their activities and realize business improvement goals."
Learn more about RightCrowd at their Virtual booth.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
Security's Solutions are Valuable Accross the Enterprise? How?
Imagine having multiple locations throughout North America, perhaps the world. Somewhere in a corporate database there is a record of which employees are at each location. A security database may have records of those employees who have entered a building and exited. Another database will have an asset record for each building. External news feeds provide political, disaster and weather information. And all of this information is time-based and location-based.
But when something urgent happens, analyzing spreadsheets and surfing databases can be cumbersome, time consuming, and dangerous. After-all, lives and assets are at stake. So where can I get one single view that will bring this all together in one simple graphical interface?
Nathan Banks, Director of Business Development for IDV, would say ‘there is a map for that.' "90% of data that security uses is location-based", said Banks. "Most of that information is in Excel, Outlook or a database and can't be easily accessed at the time of need." IDV believes the answer is aggregation and visualization. "7% of the workforce understand an excel document. A common visualization platform is needed to acquire, view and quickly understand organizational information."
As well, a common theme of ‘The Great Conversation' is the opportunity for security to reach out beyond its traditional focus of risk mitigation to assist the organization with its strategic mission and goals. According to Banks, this is the opportunity and the challenge to the attendees and the hardware and software sponsors of the Security Summit.
"My challenge to the attendees is that the roadmap to 2020 demands that security understands the business and its customers", said Banks. "We must seek to understand the shared interests and cross-functional value of the tools we are using to the rest of the organization."
According to Banks, IDV's unique application, Visual Fusion, assists with this by empowering organizations to integrate enterprise information, web services, unmanaged work files into a single interactive picture and present it all within the context of location, time and other critical visualizations. A few examples include:
- A large coffee retailer that found the productivity of their stores might be impacted by weather or other external events. Assets and employee data were aggregated into a location-based view for all stores
- Fleet Service Application: 3 Different GPS feeds were aggregated into Visual Fusion resulting in a more intuitive view of vehicle status, but also reducing GPS vendor fees in the process
- Marketing: One marketing group worked with IDV Solutions to build a solution based on Visual Fusion and Bing Maps. The new application unites multiple data sources in an interactive map-based presentation. The result saves time, enables strategists and sales representatives to better focus their marketing efforts, and enhances communication with their channel partners.
- Global Security Operations Center: Microsoft aggregates company data and external news feeds with thousands of security cameras and card reader information, providing a unique view for security workers monitoring facilities around the world.
This is all possible because IDV is a strong proponent of open systems. To Banks, true open systems are not constrained by artificial barriers that some vendors use as an excuse to limit access and protect their markets. "APIs are a barrier", said Banks. "Companies must be able to reach into corporate databases, extract information that is needed, and create solutions."
Without this level of openness, systems will not be able to interoperate and address the needs of the future. "If you want them to work in 2020", said Banks, "organizations need to stop buying closed systems. You need to just say ‘No'.
IDV's Virtual Booth contains more on this and other security solutions.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
If a Security Executive sat down with his/her peers--executives who address such things as IT Access Control, Employee and Customer Parking, Cafeteria Access and Billing, Multi-Tenant Room Access, Asset Location and Identification and Employee Enrollments--what would be the common thread tying them all together?
According to Paul Kluttz, VP of North American Sales at HID Global, the answer focuses around the issue of interoperability and organizational value. "As executives, we have a great opportunity to network with our peers, listen to their needs, identify shared interests and create cross-functional solutions," said Kluttz. "One of HID Global's core goals is to provide technology in the form of a card and the reading technology behind the card creating a vehicle to continue to mitigate risk as well as drive meaningful value across other organizational departments besides security."
HID Global's role in ‘The Great Conversation' is encouraging the 
ecosystem to uncover the needs and develop solutions that create that value. "HID Connect is designed to help end-users ‘do more than open the door' with their HID cards," said Kluttz. "We can extend the use of the card from solely being a secured credential to open a door, to cost effectively and easily solve additional problems and leverage opportunities that were not available to organizations 10 years ago."
To Kluttz, the card now has the ability to provide multiple levels of secure authentication moving the notion of ‘single sign-on' from concept to viability. "The card represents multiple uses as well as multiple levels of security authentication," said Kluttz. "We have moved the PROX technology to a more secure platform, deploying encryptions within a secure container, partitioning within the memory of the card, and logarithms that are deployed based on the presentation. We have also created more efficient means to consolidate and protect through visual printing of the card, ensuring flexibility as organizations grow, merge and change."
Legacy technology and corporate budgets must be considered as well, so Kluttz, like many manufacturing executives is quick to point out HID's flexibility in helping security executives transition to the new technology. "We have focused on most organizations' two primary transition strategies: attrition and/or ‘phased' approach. With this, we have offered a hybrid card and reader line that allows the card to be used as PROX or as ‘Smart Card'. Using this approach", said Kluttz, "we can help organizations migrate within the context of their needs, budgets and lifecycle."
Kluttz believes the "Great Conversation" is a starting point to address the #1 issue of value: encouraging cooperation, collaboration and communication with manufacturers, integrators and consultants to promote cross functional organizational assessments. "We must show our clients that we can help them get to the next level by persistently pursuing a business assessment across all silos, searching for and applying value when we see it and helping define the shared interests of all concerned."
Visit HID at their Virtual Booth.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
Chris Sincock, the Stentofon Zenitel Group USA President, is on a mission to help security get to the next level of performance. And it starts with helping them hear and speak.
"We want to help them with a new level of recognition and authentication", said Sincock. "By doing so, we help them simplify their responses and remove the opportunity for human error."
Sincock points to a common occurrence. "You have placed video cameras throughout your corporate campus. You have a control room monitoring those cameras. An incident occurs and the guard in the control room must interpret the video feed without being able to hear or engage the participants."
To Sincock what is needed is a complete security solution. "We need more than pressing a button on an intercom system", said Sincock. "The industry needs unified security communications: the ability to deal with hybrid networks through hosted audio servers, fully compliant with IP standards."
And it has been STENTOFON that has become the communication system of choice in places like Capitol Hill (Washington D.C.), Beijing Capital International Airport, The Federal Reserve Bank, the Louvre Museum, the CNN Center (Atlanta), and Shell (Brunei).
You can read more about STENTOFON at their Virtual Booth.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
Luis Orbegoso, the President of Lenel Systems International, believes the industry is ready for a smarter building. And he believes Lenel is positioned to be the central nervous system.
"Look at United Technology Corporation's key assets", said Luis. "You have Carrier, a world leader in air conditioning, heating and refrigeration. You have Otis, the world's leading manufacturer of elevators and escalators helping people move through buildings worldwide. You have UTC Power, at the forefront of fuel cell technology. But the world cannot move forward in silos. At Lenel, we have the opportunity to help bring it all together."
According to Luis, it will be all about augmenting the value proposition of these discrete solutions and it will be about maximizing the efficiencies. "We should be able to swipe a badge, enter a building, and have all the working systems of the smart building respond: from lighting to heating to moving systems like elevators. More importantly, the data can be captured, analyzed and intelligent decisions can be made."
As well, the card becomes a vehicle to easily and efficiently transact with others. "I should be able to easily purchase goods from vendors inside the building and buy a ticket from transportation systems that serve the building", said Luis. In a sense, Luis suggests the secure credential becomes the ‘value' credential. "Like Paypal created a system that allows shoppers the confidence to transact", said Luis. "We begin to tie the silos together."
At the ASG Security Summit, many of the speakers will be discussing the ‘Great Conversation' and how to create a trusted fabric of relationships to drive more value and mitigate the essential risks. To Luis, his company will be relying on conversations in the different market verticals to drive the next level of security process innovation and optimization.
"Educators should be teaching, doctors should be practicing medicine", said Luis. "We need to make their infrastructure more flexible, more secure and more valuable to their main business."
What is Luis' challenge to the security executives?
"What are you doing to position yourself with your peers around risk, growth, and opportunity? How can the data you are capturing or could be capturing influence your organization's success?"
And what is his answer: "We can help you bridge the value gap with your peers."
Visit Lenel's Virtual Booth and see what other security solutions they provide.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
When was the last time you put the security of your data as a priority in your security planning?
Most of us start thinking about cameras, access control, even video management, but quickly realize that we must be able to retain this data somewhere.
Our first reaction is we have a cost problem, a real concern with the proliferation of IP Video. So what do we do? You probably sit in a room with your ideal solution thrown out the window as you begin to compromise on video resolution, camera counts and retention of video on the storage device. Oh yes, security is knowing it works when you need it to... until you have a budget to deal with...
There are many approaches you can take, but Pivot3 believes they can help you protect your data and your budget through ‘storage virtualization' or allowing multiple storage arrays to act as one. This provides massive bandwidth through its clustered capability. As well they have built in simplified management, allowing for built-in high availability and failure tolerance, a simple but fast re-build on failure, and the ability to add capacity without taking down the system (cameras).
Why is this significant? "Storage is half the cost of implementation", says Lee Caswell, founder and CMO of Pivot3. "We bring cost savings through consolidation of hardware, reduced energy costs from reduction of power and cooling, and reduction of hardware investments through our virtual failover capability."
And the market is responding. Since Pivot3 has been recognized as being optimized for the video surveillance market, their corporate performance has tripled year over year. Caswell's biggest challenge is bridging the IT/Security chasm. The term ‘virtualization', although one of the hot topics in IT, is little known in security.
But Caswell is helping to change that. "Today, when things break, security requires that the cameras can still record, access is still available, and repairs can occur without interruption of service. Today, they attempt to do that through individual point solutions which require such things as dedicated failover servers and redundant switches on the network adding cost every step of the way. Pivot3's mission is to provide you the ability to have large scale storage that can tolerate disk or appliance failures. We do this through ‘virtual servers'."
To Caswell, this changes everything, from reduced dependence on external vendor support staff, to consolidation of hardware, to fault tolerant level failover that was, in the past, reserved for only the most critical applications.
Caswell believes one of the questions in the ‘Great Conversation' that security executives should be asking is: "How will the latest advancements in IT technologies improve my ability to deploy Video Surveillance?"
"Up until now, you could only have high availability in high risk applications. But the expectations of security and corporate executives are around ‘always on, always available'. And now we can deliver that cost effectively to our clients."
Pivot3 has many case studies around high availability, high reliability, and return on investment. In their Virtual booth you can learn more about their partners and solutions.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
To Paul Bodell, from IQinVision, end users want surveillance systems that meet their expectations and their budgets.
And Security Integrators want to satisfy their customers' needs.
But, more often than not, there is a disconnect.
The goal: Provide guidelines and/or best practices for integrators and end users so they can work together to separate their wants from their needs and co-architect a surveillance solution that is effective.
Sounds like a ‘Great Conversation'....
We asked Paul to tell us what he believes an effective surveillance solution do? "Deter, protect and provide evidence to prosecute", he said. "It is very important that end-users and integrators understand these goals. You can be successful if you spend time asking the right questions such as: ‘Are you satisfied with your surveillance solution?' Paul emphasized that one size does not fit all.
The second question Paul would ask is: ‘What resolution do you need?' "No customer has an unlimited budget," said Paul. "This isn't CSI. But needs vs. wants is a complex formula."
So IQinVision has tried to simplify it by creating three types of video categories: general, forensic and high detail. "These resolutions can be defined by pixels per foot (meter) and the number of pixels in a given area", he said. "General surveillance is for applications like traffic, city centers and shopping malls where you need to know that there is a traffic jam or a crowd but don't need to read license plates or recognize faces.
Forensic detail is what 90% of our clients are looking for, but are not getting today. Balance between detail and coverage area."
The bottom line: "You can take the image to the police and say ‘this is the person' and they have a reasonable chance of identifying the person. And then High Detail: counting cash, value of a chip in a casino, pills in an assembly line for quality control.
According to Paul, defining the wants then gets balanced against the possible. And it is in this exchange where the real needs, the real priorities get conveyed.
You can learn more about IQinVision's products and their approach to effective camera deployment by going to their virtual booth and downloading their valuable information on this and other security solutions.
By Ron Worman, The Sage Group
Over one million babies are protected every year by a unique but simple to deploy technology called Hugs®. Once the baby's tag is attached, the child is automatically enrolled in the system helping hospitals monitor the baby's whereabouts, heartbeat and secured identification between mother and child.
By developing expertise around the infant, Stanley Healthcare was able to expand its impact on healthcare by using the approach to develop protections around other patient populations. And just in time. Hospitals all over the country are attempting to extend individual patient protection across a wide spectrum of needs.
From infants to the mentally challenged; from senior citizens to teenagers, tracking the whereabouts of patients can help protect lives as well as ensure proper care.
Steve Elder, a Stanley Communications Specialist, says Stanley's vision for 2020 is to be a leader in the convergence between systems and needs. "It is important that the systems are able to track the data between them. The use cases are multiplying. A nurse may be walking around with a tag to ensure that patient activities are tracked, which can feed the billing system as well as provide intelligence around workflow. As well, equipment can be tagged, providing the means to access the right asset at the time of need."
"Our clients are the physicians, the nurses, the nurse practitioners and the workflow and information that ties them together", said Elder. "We will continue to respond to their needs by bringing the right security solutions to them, when they need them."
With over 1,000 client sites around the United States as well as a significant presence in the Pacific Northwest through its integrator, Aronson Security Group, Stanley is poised to continue to deliver quality healthcare solutions.
Visit Stanley's virtual booth today to view more information on their offerings.