SecurityInfoWatch.com Blogs

Earlier this month I found myself in an unexpected situation while walking across a hotel parking lot to my car.  Nothing in particular happened, it’s just that there was something different about this walk across a hotel parking lot to my car.  It was in the dark.

Obviously, I lived to tell about it so it couldn’t have been that big of a deal.  But it was still a surprising situation, especially given the fact that this happened at a large hotel in a nice Chicago suburb.  At first, I wondered if something was wrong with me… Why is it so dark out here?  Are my eyes working?  Am I walking in the wrong area?  Sure, it was after 10 p.m. so that had something to do with the darkness, but what about the lights?  As I looked up, I saw lamp after lamp in the parking lot, but none of them were on.

I’m not sure why these lamps weren’t on, but apparently it’s fairly common for lighting to be overlooked in security.  Recently I spoke with Patrick Fiel, public safety advisor, education, ADT Security Services, and he related some interesting stories. 

“I look at the wholistic approach to a campus, from the interior to the exterior,” says Fiel, who recently participated in the federal tradeshow, SecTech ‘07 in Washington, D.C .  “I’m not looking at one product.  I’m looking at a total solution.” 

On a campus environment, Fiel is a big proponent of having cameras visible for a deterrent effect, keeping brush trimmed and walkways lit.  While these might seem obvious, he knows of plenty of times when lights could have made a difference but weren’t used.  For example, it’s not uncommon for facility maintenance and security to not communicate, and so maintenance might set up lighting schedules to save energy costs (interior lights off at night) without thinking about the implications on security (cameras might not work without lights on).  One compromise on this could be having the lights go on as soon as a break-in is detected, etc.

If you’re a dealer currently working with a school district or college campus, then you’ve got plenty to consider from a security standpoint and if you want, you can contact ADT for a free security estimate to see if there’s a way to partner with them.  But in focusing on all the big, complicated matters of security, it might be worth remembering, “Don’t forget to turn on the lights.”

-Greg

USB drives catch a lot of flack. They can be an easy way for intellectual property to walk out your front doors, but apparently they can be serious from a worm/virus standpoint as well. A recent advisory email from DeviceWall noted that a malicious programmer has written a worm designed to infect such devices. Read on:

“A new worm which infects removable media devices such as USB flash disks and external drives has arrived. Called LiarVB-A, the worm searches out removable drives and copies itself with an autorun.inf file to ensure the malware runs automatically whenever the drive is connected to a PC.“Once it has infected a system, it drops an HTML file containing a message about AIDS and HIV to the user’s drive. Although the worm appears to do no lasting damage to a target PC, the graffiti-ware is unlikely to win the author many friends. The more serious message for IT managers (not that AIDS isn’t serious, of course) is that hackers are now fully switched-on to removable media devices as vehicles for the propagation of computer viruses. As such, companies need to think hard about how freely these devices can be used on the network.”

Some IT administrators have advocated shutting down USB ports manually with glue, but there are a number of solutions that offer a software solution, too. We did an article about USB drive security back in early May ‘07. You can read it here.

IQinvision made a stop in Oak Brook, Illinois, this evening as part of their “Sentinel Roadshow,” where the company is going to various towns to exhibit their new Sentinel Series of network cameras.  IQinvision is advertising their IQeye Sentinel Series as the first “All-Weather Megapixel Network Camera that is entirely Power over Ethernet.”  These cameras are not on the market yet, but the company is taking orders and will be shipping in July.

Representing IQinvision were Lisa Bradshaw, regional sales manager; Paul Bodell, vice president of sales and marketing; and Jason Spielfogel, product marketing manager.  Bodell gave a brief overview of the company and then Spielfogel delved into the Sentinel Series’ product details.

The Sentinel Series of network cameras aim to be rugged outdoor cameras that are easy-to-use and install.  They’re tested to work in a temperature range of -22 degrees F all the way up to 122 F; and by drawing only 6 watts of power, these cameras can be powered completely by Ethernet cabling.  (There’s also an AC/DC power option.)
One aspect of the camera that caught my attention was when Spielfogel pointed out that as soon as the camera is closed up after maintenance, it has a gasket on the inside that automatically seals it for IP 66 weather rating.  You can still go ahead and put the screws in to make sure it doesn’t get knocked around or something, but as soon as the camera is closed it’s sealed (with or without the screws).  I thought that bit of engineering showed off both the camera’s ease of use and ruggedness.

It will be interesting to see what the reports are after the Sentinel Series of network cameras have been in the field for a year or so.  I guess we’ll just have to keep an eye on IQeye.

-Greg

I got an email earlier today with an interview request from a Baltimore newspaper that was covering ADT’s Videoview system for residential video surveillance. I sent the reporter these thoughts, but I wanted to share them with our readers. In sum, residential video surveillance is an enormous growth area for our industry, and here are a few of my thoughts on what is needed and what will come down the pipe… 

I don’t think there is anything brand new about this, but what I think products like Safewatch Videoview from ADT get right is that they make it easy on the customer to get the visual information they want from their home when they can’t be there. One upside to something like Safewatch is that this pulls together what otherwise might be a lot of disparate systems. For years, there were baby room monitors sold separately, plus driveway monitors sold separately, even small surveillance cameras that many years ago would tie-in with a homeowner’s VCR system. With the Video View platform, these kind of systems are all integrated together; making all of that data available from each point. That kind of functionality has been available for years in the commercial market, but it’s significant that this kind of technology is making its way into the residential world.

An additional strength on this equipment is that users can tie it in with an alarm system so if a burglar sensor like a motion detector is tripped, it can send a video clips of what the nearest camera saw. Secondly, the system supports remote access, which is vital in today’s mobile, on-the-go world. Frankly, remote access to video should really be a pre-requisite for any homeowners considering video security at a residence. What good is a system for video recording if you can’t access the video from your office to know that your daughter just made it home from school safely?

These kind of professional residential video surveillance products are taking off first in high-end homes and at second homes/vacation homes. However, as prices drop and as residential security systems installers become more familiar with video surveillance, you’re going to see products like this become much more commonplace.

The one thing our industry will have to overcome will be privacy concerns. Many homeowners will not feel comfortable having cameras around them at all times. Additionally, despite the secure transfer of this data over the web with password protection to view it, I think people still will wonder how secure their online video connections are, or whether someone could access their system.

What is next for this type of stuff? I think you’re going to see more security companies develop similar packages and use platforms like this – and they will offer web-access to video information plus web access of other home data. Not only would you be able to get the video footage, but while you’re online, you could check your temperature on your programmable thermostat; check to see that your alarm system is armed, see a log of alarm system data (when it was armed, who armed it), maybe even adjust the schedule on a programmable yard sprinkler system. In the future, I see some of these businesses moving from security monitoring into the broader arena of home services monitoring.

-Geoff

Earlier in the week Wal-Mart was in the headlines for having a whopping $3 billion dollars in employee theft projected for this year.  At first, two things popped into my head: 1) Is that number accurate? and 2) Video analytics.

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided that the $3 billion is accurate.  Given the number of Wal-Mart stores and the pure volume of sales, that number isn’t unreasonable.  Although, that’s still a lot of stealing–and it’s coming from the company’s own employees.

Thinking about shrinkage (employee theft) and how retailers actually are more often robbed by their own employees than from outsiders reminded me of a conversation I had with Verint’s Mariann McDonagh last month when she described some of the applications of integrating video analytics with other systems.  One of the most common ways that employees steal from retailers is ringing up a phony “return” when nobody is looking, she said.  By integrating video analytics with the point-of-sales system, then the employer can search for all instances of when a “return” was rung up without anyone actually waiting in line.  That would be a suspicious situation which could then require further investigation.

This month in Security Dealer I’ll have an article that explores some possible directions which video analytics could go.  In our industry, it’s easy to think about video analytics from a physical security perspective, but that’s just the tip of the ice berg.  Some people envision video analytics breaking into the mainstream by aiding in the efficient use of resources (both manpower and energy) as well as coordinating better responses to emergency and non-emergency situations.

A few months ago I made a quick stop at a grocery store to pick up a few items before heading to a friend’s house.  I was in a hurry and knew what I was looking for, so the last thing I was thinking about was the big puddle of water I stepped in right in the middle of the produce section.  My foot started to glide and my other leg instinctively lifted as I flailed my arms in an attempt to regain my balance.  Fortunately, I didn’t wipe out.  However, I was so disturbed by what had happened that I resolved that very moment to find an employee and let them know the situation.  Interestingly enough, not only was the manager right on the other side of the apples, but he had seen the whole thing in all my awkwardness.  (Yeah, I prevented myself from falling but I looked like a clown in the process I’m sure.)

But what if things had been different?  What if I had wiped out and been injured–and nobody saw it?  Well, some proponents of video analytics see another potential niche for the technology.  Theoretically, a camera with video analytics could be programmed to recognize the sudden drop a human makes in a “slip ‘n fall” incident, and as such, could alert somebody to the situation.  Furthermore, by being able to search for “slip ‘n fall” incidents, it could be applicable when the legal issue of liability comes into question.

Although, now that I think of it, I wonder if while stealing a large item an employee has ever slipped and fell?  Can you imagine if the video analytics caught that? =)    

-Greg