Smarter, Not Harder

  • By Sydny Shepard
  • Sep 26, 2018

Each year at trade shows I like to identify common theme. Usually, I base this off of the conversations that I have in different booths throughout the the show. For GSX 2018, I talked with several companies who are in the business of working smarter, not harder. The kinds of buzz words I heard were: intelligent, artificial intelligence, smart, deep learning and machine learning.

These words lead me to believe that the security industry is finally rounding the corner to intelligent solutions. We have great security solutions in terms of hardware, but now the industry has begun to focus on the software and how we can make our hardware work smarter, not harder for our industry.

I talked with an Artificial Intelligence company, Nuvoola. At Nuvoola, they are focused on how to incorporate artificial intelligence into security solutions. One of the solutions they were showing was a multi-factor access control solution. The solution was able to use facial recognition to identify an authorized person. What I learned from the visit at the booth was that this artificial intelligence software could do so much more than that. Scott Sumner, with Nuvoola, explained to me that there are several other factors of authentication that could be used. For instance, you could integrate in voice, scan barcodes and more. The system, integrated with several means of authentication, continues to learn and get smarter, eventually helping an organization keep out bad actors and aid in the overall security of the facility in an efficient and easy-to-use manner.

Another company I met with, Verkada, is taking video surveillance and turning it smart. The web based program can be accessed on any browser and also gives users the ability to push out live video instantaneously to anyone. No required software, no application downloads. Just a link in your text messages that gives you access to the Verkada platform and live video. The company has opted update their programs as they see fit to combat cyber security threats, introduce new features and enhance performance at anytime rather than save them for one large software update rollout. This way, Verkada says, the platform is always seamlessly working - without interruption.

To see other companies that are working smarter, connect with Security Today and see live views of the GSX 2018 show at securitytoday.com/live.

About the Author

Sydny Shepard is the Executive Editor of Campus Security & Life Safety.

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