Good Things Come in Threes at ISC West 2014

• By Ginger Hill
• Apr 04, 2014

The consensus from all booth visits has thus far has been that foot traffic at this year's show is higher than last year, and I agree, as I'm forced to wedge myself between people, trying to make it to all my appointments. Of course with my thick Southern accent, I do politely excuse myself, but I'm not sure if people actually understand what I'm saying or if I scare them into moving over!

Nevertheless, after speaking with a colleague, a valid point was made: While there is tons of foot traffic, there is equally as many people inside the booths as there are strolling the floor. I began to ponder why this is, and I have concluded that three companies demonstrate why people are so intrigued and engaged this year.

A source of education. After discovering that people truly don't understand the exact level of security they need, Tracie Thomas, marketing director, Boon Edam presented me with a process of thinking through the details before making a security purchase. Known as S.T.A.R.T.S.S. and based on research, people tend to make purchases based on three details: ROI, security features and aesthetics; however, it's important to think about five other details before installing a security solution to ensure the proper level of security is achieved and overall satisfaction is gained.

Boon Edam, Inc. takes the time to properly train their integrators on all eight details, and as I listened to Thomas speak about each one I was truly engaged and tuned in to learning more.

Meeting a need. Painting a story of enterprise, the people at Genetec understand that enterprise is about aspirations, business structure and growth plans; thus, businesses come in all sizes, structured in a variety of ways with all types of goals. With this in mind, Genetec realized that they had two network security appliances meeting the needs of small and large businesses: the SV-16 for lower camera counts and the SV-PRO, prebuilt for a 100 camera system that uses a rack. But, what about the medium sized business?

Back to the drawing board, Genetec designed the SV-32 network security appliance for companies with distributed federation, giving enterprises the ability to operate their own security as well as have the choice of dedicating a security employee to this task.

The SV-32 will be available around May or June of this year.

A glimpse into the future. Bringing to the security industry a portable fingerprint scanning fob known as AXISKEY, Sonavation, a small company in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., is dedicated to cost-effective biometrics for consumer deployment. In fact, this small company of 50 employees is taking the concept of fingerprint scanning to a whole new level.

Sonavation has devised a way to use ultrasound technology to not only read actual fingerprints, indicating anomalies, patterns and other surface details, but to go below the surface into the fat pad on the tip of the finger, into the bone and to even measure the pulse of blood pumping through the veins in the finger, all while keeping this technology within a key-fob sized device.

The AXISKEY will be available in May 2014 for approximately $99.95, and ultrasound finger print scanning should be available in about a year.

So, why all the foot and booth traffic this year at ISC West 2014? Companies are educating, meeting needs and demonstrating the future of security.