Security Integration: Ground Floor Changes

The information technology capabilities of security systems have grown tremendously over the past decade, resulting in both intelligent devices and intelligent systems. Emerging technology has taken intelligence to a new level with systems that run on top...

• data association

• data correlation

• data fusion

Data filtration addresses high volumes of data to extract what is meaningful and important.

Data association matches up one set of data with another set of data, based upon predefined rules. Pattern recognition is a type of data association.

Data correlation is the identification of relationships among data that can be used to draw conclusions. For example, the existence of multiple objects in close proximity moving at relatively the same speed and direction indicates possible team activity.

Data fusion is a category of information-combining techniques. It is a broad and advanced technical topic and also an emerging science (see ). One form of data fusion combines different data from the same source (i.e. multiple versions) to get an improved result, as in comparisons of multiple handwriting signatures.

Another form resolves data from different sources that relate to the same target. For example, is it the same object on both cameras? This is sometimes called data integration.

A third form combines data from different sources to get an improved or new type of result. Human vision is used as a common example. Because each of your eyes has a slightly different viewing angle, you have depth perception and 3-D vision.

Situational Awareness

Simply put, situational awareness is knowing what's going on around you. The U.S. Navy defines it as “the degree of accuracy by which one's perception of his current environment mirrors reality” ( . Security analytics provide pre-processed information to facilitate security personnel's rapid comprehension of a situation, allowing them to choose a course of action in time to be effective.

Figure 1 on page 26 is a conceptual diagram provided by Proximex Inc. ( that illustrates how its Surveillant system provides command-and-control capabilities by establishing a layer of integrated security analytics across multiple traditional security systems and sensors.

For example, an access control breach alert can bring up the appropriate live camera and recorded video, the last X number of people who presented a badge, and the appropriate photos from the badging system, along with information from other systems. Instead of spending 10 or 15 minutes manually assembling information, security teams can gain nearly instant situational awareness and move rapidly from incident notification to suspect identification to suspect video tracking.

Workflow Automation: Beyond Command and Control

Workflow automation is not new in the business world, but it has not previously been applied to security operations due to the isolation of the typical security operation from the rest of the business. Now the development of the chief security officer position and the adoption of the enterprise security risk management perspective within global corporations have heightened the need for policy-based security management that can span the enterprise.

A system with security workflow automation capabilities, such as SAFE by Quantum Secure ( , can provide a means to define security policy, document company personnel roles and security stakeholders, and implement automated support for day-to-day operations as well as crisis management and incident response.

A security workflow automation system rolls out policies electronically to the appropriate recipients and can alert you if a newly-issued policy is not read and acknowledged by a specific deadline. Integration with various security systems can help track policy compliance and performance. For example, let's say the policy states that fire alarms must be acknowledged at the fire panel within 30 seconds and responded to in person by the facility's fire warden within 4 minutes. By integrating the workflow automation system with fire panels at corporate facilities, you can track response times and issue periodic reports showing the level of policy compliance.