A Key Role
Data Reporting and Dispatching Features Essential for Converged Security Systems
- By Tony V. Capelli
- Aug 01, 2015
The city of Calgary in southern Alberta,
Canada has achieved international acclaim
with its annual Calgary Stampede
and its legacy of world-class sporting
facilities and events. Along with this
reputation, the city also has made a name for itself as
a leader in creating a 21st century security operations
strategy that centralizes its municipal security tasks—
cyber, logical and physical—to better protect its approximately
1.1 million residents, 22,000 employees,
and more than 750 sites and critical infrastructure
units including transit and water services.
Playing a critical role among the advanced technology
solutions the city uses to help develop and establish
this innovative plan, PPM’s enterprise incident
management software solution is used across the municipality’s
32 different business units for cross-divisional
tracking, dispatching/reporting, investigation,
and analysis of incidents and events. The software,
Perspective by PPM, pulls all of these various areas
together within a single work group structure so that
incidents and events across any of the business units
can be managed in one centralized hub.
Owen Key is the city’s chief security officer/chief
information security officer as well as the chief architect
of the unified security operations strategy. The
incident management software, with its innovative reporting
tools and interactive dashboard, has been an
integral part of his initiative uniting the functions of
the various security departments. These include information
security, internal investigations, physical security
and emergency management as well as a security
advisory group to ensure the departments perform
collectively and in a cohesive manner.
“Incident management software gives us far better
insight into the operations of this complex municipal
environment,” Key said. “We can do drilldowns on
information from sites to business units to types of
incidents that are occurring. Just about whatever you
can imagine is possible, including tracking incidents
in regard to our information security.”
Using the city’s centralized repository, information
from all of the systems (i.e. video surveillance, incident
reports, access, fire and alarm, etc.) is stored and
available for business units to run queries and build
their business intelligence. The stored data is also
used for analysis or investigation utilizing the incident
management software. As an example, incidents
in one of the city’s public buildings can be matched
with any number of criteria such as audio, financial,
or even people counting to look for building utilization.
Additionally, the city has been able to use other
aspects of the incident management software to maximize
internal resources. Key said that Perspective’s
dispatching capabilities were centralized throughout
the organization to enable enterprise-wide alarm response
and more efficient and proactive dispatching
of guard services and resources.
He also said that while incident management improves
security in any large enterprise including medical,
education or transportation facilities, information
analysis can also provide the ammunition needed
to help obtain further resources to protect assets. He
cites the example of a city recreation center suffering
from repeated vandalism, where data from the incident
management software can provide the justification
for a request for further capital expenditures such
as video surveillance cameras.
“The numbers and the information are there and
when we need to make a presentation we can do so
with a two or three-page report, with graphics, that
paints a picture of the situation—whether it’s a request
for additional video surveillance cameras for
a recreation center or for our annual report to the
corner office,” he said. “Perspective is excellent in this
regard because it gives us the numbers to allow us to
get our point across quickly and concisely. We can be
collaborative with the business units and realistically
identify the risks. That is something everyone can understand
and get on board with.”
The successful adoption of the centralized security
program by city employees is also attributable to the
integration capabilities of the various sub-systems.
Key points out, it wouldn’t take too long for information
overload to set in or for the system to completely
bog down if software solutions were simply
added without any integration capability. The ability
to integrate and control the various systems under a
single platform, either through PSIM or SEIM solutions,
has helped deliver improved situational awareness
while eliminating the problems of false alarms or
false information.
Key’s strategy of focusing on technology interoperability
has been effective in harmonizing policies
and procedures and providing information that is
useful for both routine and irregular situations. As IT
and security networked systems continue their convergence,
this strategy, and PPM’s enterprise incident
management software, is the right solution to maintain
the flow of vital and useful data.
This article originally appeared in the August 2015 issue of Security Today.