Industry Focus
Bridging the Great Divide
- By Ralph C. Jensen
- Nov 01, 2015
More than a decade ago, the talk was all
about convergence. Well, the industry has
converged, but there is now something
more interesting on the horizon. Spectra Logic is
coming into the market, not to compete with camera
manufacturers or the software (VMS), but to develop
storage; deep storage.
Brian Grainger, the chief sales officer at Spectra,
said the company has identified the security industry
as the next big thing. We already knew that, but his
take on security will be a matter of offering new options
in the world of storage.
Spectra recently turned 35 years old. It is privately
owned and shows a profit year over year. They know
exactly what they are doing, and it’s exciting to see
them begin to wade into the industry. Grainger and
I talked about one of their customers in the Dallas
area—more precisely, the Dallas Independent School
District (DISD). The school district uses the Spectra
technology for storage systems only. They store all
district records, emails and other necessary things.
“There are two divisions in the security world,”
Grainger said. “The security world is experiencing
something we have already been through with the
media and entertainment industry, namely that the
two parties involved didn’t talk to each other. If I
were a CIO, I would force a marriage between IT
and security.”
This isn’t news to the security industry, but
Grainger makes a salient point. This has been a sticking
point to some degree as end users bought IP cameras
and wanted to put them on the IT network. IT
was quite reluctant to have another thing on the network,
but it’s working and I think the two camps have
a general understanding of what has to be done, and
what each party’s responsibility will be. The integrator
also plays a key role in this dynamic.
“The integrator will have to come up to speed on
education and certifications to install today’s solutions,
if they want to survive,” Grainger said.
Grainger is very excited to be part of the security
industry. He took a year sabbatical from Spectra, to
travel around the world and talk to end users, integrators
and manufacturers. The result will be Spectra
joining the game. Grainger got so inspired about
the security industry that he has hired four subject
matter experts. Though he wouldn’t name them by
name, they come from Solaratec; Discovery IT, an
integrator on the West Coast; Arecont Vision and
3VR. All four are great representatives of the security
industry.
“The reason we want to join the security industry
is that we’re in business for storage; that’s it,”
Grainger said. “We understand Big Data, and it is our
core competency.”
Nathan C. Thompson, founder and CEO, knows
the value of data; therefore, he knows the need for
security. Twitter alone creates the need for 12 TB of
storage per day. A typical security camera gathers as
much as 105 GB of data per day. Now, you can understand
why the security market is so inviting to Spectra.
A lot of this is about IT security, but it also means
that physical security plays a critical role in securing
data centers, and so much more.
Spectra held their bi-annual Deep Storage Summit
in Boulder, Colo., in October. One case study was
particularly interesting from Richard Duke, chief systems
architect of publishing services at The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS Church
has various security measures in place at their Granite
Mountain Vault near Salt Lake City. Access to the
site is blocked by 21 ton doors of granite, which close
out the vault. There is armed security 24 hours a day.
“The church takes physical security very seriously,”
Duke said. “There are mantraps at the vault,
but the church also uses card readers and IP cameras
all over the world. Their monitoring center is tightly
controlled as operators watch church property worldwide,
such as visitor centers, mission homes and temples.
Data security is just as important, and we have
built a very good team to keep track of cyber security.
Our team identifies where a cybersecurity attack
comes from, and why.”
The physical security side has long been solving
problems, and is now pared with the cyber side. We
will hear more about cybersecurity in the commercial
and industrial side very soon.
This article originally appeared in the November 2015 issue of Security Today.
About the Author
Ralph C. Jensen is the Publisher of Security Today magazine.