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.