The Security Week That Was: 11/09/2007

Nov. 9, 2007
A weekly surveillance of news shaping your profession

Just What the Economy Didn't Order

Earlier this week, an FBI report indicated that terrorists might be considering U.S. shopping malls as potential terrorist soft targets. It sounded like the FBI had been reading Tom Clancy's novel "Teeth of the Tiger", which has a story line that involves a coordinated terror attack at a mall in middle America.

Fairly quickly after that report made its way to the general press, the Department of Homeland Security has downplayed the FBI report, saying that the information's credibility was questionable and that the source may have been questionable as well. So that gets the mind spinning? Was the DHS "downplay" merely a homeland security marketing spin to ensure that right now, so close to the holiday shopping season, Americans didn't stay away from retailers? We'll probably never know, though it seems prudent to downplay such a threat which vaguely mentioned some major American cities.

Looking for RMR?
New programs from SentryNet and IVR Controls

Security dealers looking for more RMR (and who isn't?) should take note of a couple pieces of recent news on that front. IVR Controls launched within the last month, and has built a traditional "authorized dealer" program around providing video surveillance and access for residential and small business markets. The solution allows dealers to get into this offering without having to invest in massive off-site server arrays for hosting client video; the company proposes to do all of that for the dealers. Likewise, the SentryNet dealer program has linked up with RSI Alarm's Videofied offering (video verification) for dealers. Our take: Video is getting ready to explode as an RMR source for security dealers.

More News Making Waves
Pelco's new COO; union negotiations for S/Os in Bay area; Tamron's new GM

Pelco announced this week that Dean Meyer has been named chief operating officer; he comes from TAC Americas, also a part of Schneider Electric (which acquired Pelco recently, and decided to operate Pelco out of TAC). ... Security companies in the San Francisco Bay Area are facing tough negotiations with the SEIU union that represents security officers. The current hang-up in notifications is reportedly over the issue of the healthcare insurance program. ... Tamron, which makes the lenses on so many of today's surveillance cameras, has a new general manager for the Americas in the CCTV optics division.

Covering More IT for PhySec Pros
Time to get down and dirty with IT knowledge

Convergence: have you heard enough yet? Sadly, probably not. SIW has been making an effort to bring you more and more content related to IT security and IT infrastructure, and apparently you like it. Our article this week explaining the different RAID categories used for video surveillance storage has been enormously well-read, and I think you'll like what we have coming with more information about issues like PKIs, SSL, network topography and more. Stay tuned; we're going to focus on giving you the information you need to speak the IT language and ask the right questions about converged technology.

Finally, we close with a look at the most read stories of the week: