Going Places

Physical security, information managed solutions take transportation to a new level

• By Jack Smith
• Jun 01, 2008

Transportation affects people every day. They depend on the safe and efficient operation of airports, mass transit systems and roadways for work, personal travel and commercial business.

At the same time, transportation organizations face a growing number of threats. Real-life examples include recent attacks on public transit in Madrid, Mumbai and London, but also less-publicized security breaches at airports. Terrorists understand the damage, fear and destabilization to the economy that their attacks can cause.

Transportation authorities also are looking for ways to improve ridership, passenger count and revenue by streamlining operations, improving security and increasing customer satisfaction. Passengers want to feel safe when they travel and are always looking for a balance among the most convenient, cost-effective and safe travel methods. While trying to grow revenue, transportation authorities must deal with increased security risks, ongoing budgetary constraints and an increased need for regulatory compliance.

Security is a top priority of transportation authorities today. Most transportation organizations have deployed or are evaluating new security technologies to address their security pain points. This includes adding and extending their CCTV and video management systems, improving access control and enabling new technologies such as video analytics, RFID, biometrics, radar systems and perimeter detection.

New Technologies, New Problems
New technologies can lead to security improvements; however, they often lead to inefficiencies, complexity and an increased need for additional security resources. With new sensors and systems, there is a huge increase in the amount of information (including video and alarm data) that is collected across an increasing number of “silos” of security systems.

Information between systems needs to be shared to effectively analyze and respond to situations. Manual correlation is time-consuming and error-prone, often leading to ineffective or inefficient incident response. Additionally, government regulations require that transportation authorities manage and audit their processes and personnel to be in compliance—but distributed siloed systems make enforcement and reporting difficult and expensive. Finally, into the foreseeable future, transportation organizations will continue to add new security technologies. Without a holistic integrated solution, the problem is just exacerbated—not only by increased costs, but also by ineffective response to a single incident, which can lead to bad press and lost passenger revenue.

Connecting the Dots
A new area of emerging technology solutions, called physical security information management solutions, addresses these challenges. PSIM integrates and unifies information from multiple security systems and sensors, connecting and correlating relevant information from the different sources to provide security operators with the knowledge to make appropriate and expedient decisions. It is not merely the integration of multiple video systems but also the connection and workflow of the information that make it relevant to the end user of the information.

“The defining characteristic of PSIM is a technology whose primary purpose is to answer the questions ‘What’s happening?’ and ‘Is it working?’ ” said Steve Hunt, a security analyst for Hunt Business Intelligence.

PSIM provides a unification and workflow platform that connects security systems (access control, analytics, sensors, video surveillance, etc.) to enable security teams to better manage security events.

Integration is Only the Beginning
With all the disparate security systems in a typical transportation environment, it is critical to first be able to collect, consolidate and integrate technologies that already are installed. Most environments have existing systems that are operational. PSIM solutions enable organizations to keep installed security technologies and extract additional value by interfacing and “overlaying” these systems.

Most environments already have video surveillance systems like cameras, DVR/NVR systems and access control systems, but PSIM solutions also allow extension to other new and nontraditional systems. For instance, PSIM enables information from traditional systems to be connected with data and information from other systems that can be valuable to enhance security operations—information from video analytics, RFID, HR databases, building management and maintenance systems, for example. PSIM solutions enable transportation organizations to integrate and choose “best of breed” solutions while supporting multiple vendors who offer the same technology (e.g., multiple video systems).

While integration is important, not all integration is created equal. PSIM solutions take integration to the next level, supporting open standards, such as XML and Web services, while accepting proprietary systems through vendor-provided software development kits. Also, PSIM is about sharing information, so integrations should be bidirectional—it’s just as important for the centralized platform to receive alarms from an access control system as it is for the centralized system to send updates or acknowledgements back to the access control system and take action, such as lock/unlock doors or move PTZ cameras.

Centralized Visibility and Control
Transportation security teams need to be able to monitor, visualize and control their security resources. The key is visualization of the data in a way that is intuitive and enables information to be centrally viewed and relevant to the user of the information, because not all users have the same level of expertise. Information and controls should be presented in a way that is easy to use, retrieve and navigate. This includes the ability to view and control security resources from a centralized user interface as well as to manage alarms on an exception basis and respond only when there is a real alarm or incident.

Visualization is also about how information is presented so the user can respond quickly with the right information and by using minimal mouse-clicks. Security incidents happen quickly, and operators and guards need to respond quickly by moving cameras, locking doors or notifying relevant parties.

By consolidating information, security teams have more visibility of their environment and situational awareness for incidents and alarms. Situational awareness is about knowing what’s going on to figure out what to do. Knowing what’s going on involves collecting information from multiple devices. However, figuring out what to do requires connecting information from the multiple systems that are relevant to each other to accurately analyze the situation.

Providing Intelligence and Automation
When an emergency egress door generates an alarm at an airport, how difficult is it to pull up the recorded video for that particular door 10 seconds before the alarm? It’s straightforward if it’s automated. But if the systems are not integrated or automated, this becomes a tedious task of viewing the alarm time from one system, finding the related camera on a physical map printout, then finding the right camera ID and pulling up the right camera time in another system. This seemingly simple procedure has multiple steps and can be time-consuming and error-prone.

Take this to the next level, and imagine you want to provide a map, tie in a badge photo or HR record, retrieve door activity, compare a name to a No Fly List or track a person across multiple cameras. All of these are legitimate needs but almost impossible to perform in a timely manner without automation and workflow. The proper PSIM solution provides rules and workflow procedures to automatically collect, relate and display relevant information from relevant systems—to automate and assist what the operator or user would have done manually. Airport security operators still need to make the decision about what to do, but workflow and rules will help with difficult and tedious tasks, improving response times and minimizing mistakes.

A majority of alarms are generated and received in the security operations center. The right PSIM solution should provide enough intelligence to enable security operators to respond to only the real alarms efficiently and cut through the “noise.” Information should be able to be correlated so false or nuisance alarms can be reduced or suppressed, and enough intelligence and automation should enable the operator to quickly decide whether an alarm requires dispatch by a security guard or by local law enforcement. Additionally, being able to visualize where personnel and resources are positioned can aid in faster interdiction and response to an alarm. This can be handled if the security guards are using a PDA or similar device that provides a GPS location tracked by the system.

How to Respond
Most security organizations have welldefined procedures for responding to different types of alarms that should be integrated across multiple security systems. Response tasks are taken across alarming, access control, video, intercom and communications systems. Doesn’t it reason to have an integrated platform that can guide the process and workflow across multiple security systems?

When an alarm occurs, there should be no question about what needs to be done. Workflow, tasks and procedures should be predefined by the people who know—the security directors and managers— and should follow best practices. The operators need to react with this information in hand. Additionally, if the operator does not have the expertise, privilege or jurisdiction, the alarm can be forwarded to another person, supervisor or guard with a PDA or other device.

Connecting the right information also means allowing the security teams to take action with the right tools and with the confidence to respond—ensuring that they have the most relevant and timely information provided by automated rules. Today, the time that it takes for many security operations teams to effectively collect and analyze data from multiple systems to make a decision can take minutes or even hours. Security organizations looking to improve their effectiveness and level of service are not eliminating the operators through automation. But they should be looking for ways to reduce the time it takes to respond to an alarm and enabling the security officer to perform more efficiently and reduce errors.

Reporting from Day 1
Reporting is typically an afterthought. However, good reporting can be one of the most powerful communications mechanisms for real-time response and proactive management of security resources.

A good PSIM solution will provide reporting as a part of every aspect—including incident, trend, performance, audit and tracking reports. Reports can be quickly generated and delivered to operators and guards, management teams and other government agencies like the Transportation Security Administration. The following are some types of reports and their uses.

• Incident reports can be used to connect information across multiple systems relating to an incident. Typically, organizations need to provide an incident report immediately. A good security system management platform can provide incident reports automatically or within minutes of an alarm.

• Trend reports allow operators and managers to generate sophisticated and valuable reports within minutes across multiple security systems. These reports may include the frequency of alarms on each day of the week, the fastest and slowest operators or the sensors that generate the most alarms.

• Audit reports ensure regulatory compliance for incidents. This information enables a full incident audit of all actions taken on multiple systems.

• Tracking reports enable security teams to track suspects across multiple cameras either to catch them in real time or to be used in a forensic mode to track and trail for investigative purposes.

• Performance reports enable security organizations to improve security by measuring metrics that are important to the organization, for instance, “How have I been able to improve overall response times?” or “How have I been able to reduce the number of alarms in my environment?”

Reports are the best way for security organizations to secure further project funding and additional resources. They capture critical information about how the organization has performed, where it needs to be and how it can be improved with additional technologies or resources.