SecurityInfoWatch.com Blogs

I was on the phone yesterday with an assistant of Simon Kinberg, the screenwriter who penned Mr. and Mrs. Smith and X-Men: The Last Stand. His assistant, a former writer for E! Online, is telling me that he’s working on a movie plot in which in two brothers attempt to rob a mega-mansion somewhere in the desert. She’s asking me about cool technologies that a multi-millionaire might put around their property if money was no object. Oh, man, we could dream up some cool stuff. So I rattle off some technologies like video analytics and fence systems using fiber optics that can identify intruders…definitely not your standard fare for a residential application, but if money was no object…

So then she asks, “Well, then how would you break it?” I told her, well, if these systems are set up properly and working, they aren’t designed to be broken, but I tell her, yes, you could come up with some theoretical way to break these systems. Putting a video loop into the cameras so they don’t see the “real” video? Been there, done that, she says. Well, I say, many of these systems today are running over computer networks, so you could set up a theoretical scene where the bad guys try to hack into a security system to take over the data. “Oooh!,” she says. “Where do they put the equipment?” Well, I say, it can be in a variety of different places; most designs run the data on-site, but some move the data off-site for processing. I can feel the gears turning in her head.

Now, I’m not much of a movie buff, but I am a web researcher, so I searched for Simon Kinberg’s name in the news, and came up with an article from April of this year which appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Kinberg is apparently writing the script for The Hardy Men, a forthcoming movie about boyhood heroes “The Hardy Boys”. I put two and two together and The Hardy Boys definitely fit the “two brothers” profile which Kinberg’s assistant mentioned. The Hardy Men are to be played by Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller, as unlikely a pairing as anyone could expect, but one that should give its share of laughs.

My guess? When The Hardy Boys/Hardy Men movie comes out in 2008 (it sounds like a summer blockbuster release), all you security guys will be able to check out how Hollywood sees high-end residential security. I can’t wait to stuff my face with popcorn and enjoy high-tech security on the big screen.

-Geoff

I wrote an article about this a while ago, but apparently my email address, that of a simple online security trade journal editor, has been misunderstood as someone who sells “products”. Thus this morning, I got hit with the classic scam; it also arrived in the inboxes of others in the industry.

Hello sales dept,       
     my name is walex benson i will like to order for some (SECURITY PRODUCTS). from your store and below is  the  quantity needed on the SMOKE DETECTOR
 
system sensor photoelectric smoke detector with base
model number.2w-b
Quantity needed : 200 units
 
So kindly email me back with the total cost of the devices plus tax including the shipping cost to the shipping address below….
 
191 Scheafer Street Suite 2
Brooklyn New York
11207
 
I look forward hearing back from you with the total cost of
the detectors plus tax including the overnight shipping cost to your location and let me know the types of credit card you accept as a method of payment
Regards,
walex benson . 
 

If you want to read the article where we tried to warn the industry about such scams, go here. Personally, it gave me a bit of a laugh that I — as someone who has tried to educate others about these scams — got sent a scam email. You’d think they could have at least Googled “Kohl, smoke detector, scam” and figured out that I’m not a likely target. Ah well…if they were that smart, they wouldn’t be trying to steal smoke detectors.

-Geoff

The next time you’re burglarizing a home and happen to find a nice webcam to steal, you might also want to grab the hard drive that recorded the whole thing.

-Greg

“You were caught sneaking merchandise out with the garbage. Move back 2 spaces.”

It’s about 3:30 on the Tuesday before July 4th, and while most desk employees are probably planning their day at the pool or thinking about how many pounds of beef they’ll need for the BBQ, I’m sitting here playing an online game. OK, if my boss is reading this, it’s actually a 5-minute demo of a loss prevention game that was created by Sealund & Associates Corporation down in St. Pete, Fla. One of our columnists, the ever-analytic Liz Martinez, who writes on issues of loss prevention and retail security for the site, sent this to me and suggested I check it out, so I’m not really playing games….I am, ahem, working.

The game is sort of a neat idea — it asks common employee honesty and loss prevention questions, and could be something that retail managers would ask their employees to play. If I understand the demo correctly, it doesn’t grade the employees; rather it only allows them to move forward along the safari-themed path if they answer questions correctly.

But here’s the thing, games need to be competitive (meaning points, rather than simply moving ahead through a board-type layout), and if something is to be used for training purposes, it really should be specifically tailored to your own LP procedures, which it doesn’t seem to be.

Additionally, it needs to treat employees like adults, since child labor laws aren’t going to allow you to hire 8-year-olds who would like this type of game that seems to belong on the back of a Fruity Pebbles box, filled with images of stampeding elephants and a dangerous lion’s den.

And employees shouldn’t be insulted with questions either. Take for example the initial question, which asks an employee that if they saw some old staplers near the cash registers and needed one at their home if they should:

1. Take the stapler
2. Resist the temptation of stealing a stapler that could lose them their job for something valued at just a few bucks
3. Take a brand-new stapler, since the store sells new staplers
4. Ask if anyone is using them, and if not, take one home with you.

And then there’s the question — if someone forgot to sign their credit card sales slip and you notice it at the end of the day, should you sign it for them or advise your store/shift manager?

Now maybe the “real” game has better questions that will get employees to look past the Fruity Pebbles mentality of the game, but I wouldn’t know. I think an online tutorial for retail employees on the issue of loss prevention is a good thing, but please spare us the simplistic questions and the stampeding elephants. Instead, spend some time to create questions that are truly ethically challenging — the kind of challenges that good retail employees face everyday.

Of course, if you want to play the game yourself, you can check out the demo. There’s a promotional code and the first 100 persons who contact Sealund with that code will earn free access to the game. Enjoy, but beware the jungle’s quicksand pit.

-Geoff