Geoff Kohl

  • Technology would protect hotel staff
    by Geoff Kohl - Wednesday February 8, 2012
    If a proposed contract for New York City hotel staffers is approved, personal panic alarms (panic buttons) would be part of a measure to improve safety for those staff members . The proposal between the Hotel Association of New York (the association of hotel owners) and the New York Hotel Trades Council AFL CIO (the union of hotel workers) specifies "devices to be carried on their persons at work that they can quickly and easily activate to effectively summon prompt assistance to their location", in addition to pensions, health coverage and raises. Such devices are already part of personal safety at other locations. In fact California State University at San Marcos began testing a similar unit for students late last year, which used...

  • GPS tracking considerations
    by Geoff Kohl - Wednesday February 1, 2012
    The New York Times has a great article about GPS tracking considerations in light of the recent Supreme Court case that effectively declared that warrants are necessary for GPS tracking . What the New York Times does is point out the grey areas beyond the point that warrants are required -- specifically it looks at the private investigation business and how GPS technology is being used to catch unfaithful spouses, and even how GPS helps track children and elderly parents. This case, which seems at first to only relate to law enforcement, is of major importance to the security industry. Those grey areas of GPS tracking impact a number of businesses in our sector, and for now, those grey areas seem to be marked as legal. Dealers...

  • Staying vigilant in protecting your business
    by Geoff Kohl - Friday January 27, 2012
    Back in October of last year, in this same Friday column , I wrote about the advancement of what I referred to as "municipal monitoring". What I was referring to was not the practice of a city monitoring its own camera system or fire alarms at city buildings, but something more serious to our industry. The monitoring proposal from cities was that they would require all fire alarm signals come into the city directly for monitoring, and that fire alarm system owners would have to convert or add technology to their systems to support this. In addition, they would have to pay the city to monitor their systems (often at a higher rate than industry practice). In that column, I proposed that there were six key reasons that municipal fire alarm...

  • IT Security professionals recession-proof
    by Paul Rothman - Friday January 27, 2012
    In 2011, as it will be in 2012, information security professional was the recession-proof job to have in our industry. According to a new Frost & Sullivan report sponsored by (ISC)2, cybersecurity skills are key to weathering the economic downturn that has engulfed the vast majority of global workers.   "The role of the information security professional has been steadily changing during the past decade. They are now responsible for the security of many facets of an organization, including regulatory compliance, human resource and legal compliance, data security, access control and more," the report says. "As a result,information security professionals have weathered the economic recession well compared to professionals in other...

  • Security Highlights from the State of the Union
    by Paul Rothman - Wednesday January 25, 2012
    It can be difficult to pay complete attention to the State of the Union -- especially when you are trying to ignore all this tax talk and hear about how the president wants to impact the security industry. But hey, that's why we have the Executive Suite! I have combed through the transcript to find any statements that might impact the security community. Here are some quotes, straight from the transcript of the speech, which I found here :   On piracy and counterfeit goods: "I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products. And I will not stand by when our competitors don't play by the rules. We've brought trade cases against China at nearly twice the rate as the last administration - and it's made a...