Tuesday 21 February 2012

DIGITAL SWITCH OVER

The UK switch over to digital TV has prompted an increase of burglaries by using the distraction to commit the offence. An increased number of legitimate engineers in the area may lead vulnerable people into a false sense of security when somebody knocks on their door.

It may be prudent to check on people you know to make sure that they understand that the switch over team NEVER cold call and ALWAYS carry ID. There is a telephone number that anybody can call to verify a person claiming to be part of the process. 0800 40 85 900. This can be called whilst they are at the door, a legitimate caller will not mind waiting.

There is a help scheme available, for more details contact the same number above.

By way of a credit, this info has been released today on a Sussex Police Bulletin.

A REMINDER FROM ME ABOUT DISTRACTION

The wider issue here for the security community is the reminder that security can be easily compromised through distraction. Whether vulnerable people worried about their television or professional personnel that are responsible for a facility; if you become distracted by superficial events you can leave yourself open to miscreant activity.

Having focused personnel, the correct environment and supporting intelligence from technology is key to a successful security operation.


Friday 17 February 2012

A NOTE FROM ME

The article below "DEFINING PSIM" posted on the 16th Feb was collated to try and cut through all of the "buzz" around PSIM. It seems that there are many companies out there that claim to be a "PSIM" provider. The problem I had was getting to the bottom of what PSIM actually means and how it can benefit an organisation. The term PSIM is attributed to Steve Hunt but Frost & Sullivan have done a good job of categorising three tiers of PSIM companies. In my own opinion only the top tier should be considered as PSIM because they integrate and analyse data from disparate systems to identify and categorise security events.. The other companies that claim to be PSIM tend not to be as flexible as the Tier one products because they have been developed specifically to support a core product such as CCTV video codecs or a perimeter detection system. These systems do integrate with other security systems but are very limited on the range and capability of drivers available.

The PSIM market is evolving very rapidly and various forums are discussing the capabilities and next evolution of the concept. Join me on LinkedIn for one of these groups, or if you have a comment please let me know.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thursday 16 February 2012

WHAT IS PSIM





PSIM as a concept emerged because end user managers of security environments cried out for better management of their security information. They wanted to be able to do with security data what every other business unit does with the data from their respective business units – that is, to make intelligent business decisions.

PSIM is a better, more flexible and much more useful way of managing security events and the information needed to respond to incidents than traditional command centre solutions.

PSIM is simply the security version of the larger, more important business tool of Information Management.

THE CHALLENGE


Currently, improvisational, fragmented and off-the-cuff security management is the norm. It's common to find security operations and traditional command-and-control centres using paper-based processes and not sharing information. Business units and IT departments rarely have access to data in corporate security departments. Events are managed separately.

Access-control-related events are monitored and managed separately from intrusion detection systems, and separate also from environmental sensors and other alerting systems. Often the people and systems are not even located in the same facility, inhibiting information sharing and correlation.

THE CONSIDERATIONS


Converged security and IT networks need to be managed to mitigate any risk of negative impact through the flood of data induced by an IP CCTV system.

Ensuring interoperability across different vendors' devices/systems is a challenge. The physical security market as a whole lacks common, open standards. Thus, virtually, any deployment requires the development of new drivers to integrate various systems.

Choosing the right system. The capability to intelligently analyse and cross-reference incoming data represents a further challenge, most PSIM systems, still process individual alarms.

THE BENEFITS


PSIM principles may be used to produce better situational awareness, prompting better security and business decisions. Situation management software creates useful information out of raw video by contextualizing it (unifying video, alarm and sensor data) which improves situational awareness and makes incident responses more efficient.

Data management best practices are more pervasive now. Regulatory compliance and management best practices dictate that computer systems and data be handled in standardized ways. Security departments are, in general, not compliant with these best practices.

The PSIM system will aggregate, correlate and analyse data from various sources, including alarms, environmental sensors, intrusion-detection systems and video surveillance to ….


  • Present a situational view of data.
  • Guide standard operating procedures by documenting efficient best practices for every situation.
  • Identify trends by searching through data from current and past events to create reports.
  • Audit operator behaviour by recording all responses to all alerts for later analysis.

CONCLUSION


Physical Security Information Management systems provide specific security information based on intelligent analysis of data from a range of sensors from what would traditionally be disparate systems. It enables an organisation to manage risk and ensure that standard procedures are carried out at an enterprise level.


Credit:
Steve Hunt http://www.huntbi.com
Frost & Sullivan http://www.frost.com

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