Blog Archives
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Mass shootings: What really changes?
By Geoff Kohl - Friday July 20, 2012
"I think this might mean the end for walking into a movie with whatever you want to." That’s what one of our fans wrote on the SecurityInfoWatch.com Facebook wall this morning after we linked to news coverage of the mass shootings in Aurora, Colo. , that left 14 dead at a movie theater, and dozens more injured. My question for the security industry is this: Will we really change anything? After the Columbine massacre in 1999 and after a few similar incidents in the last decade, there have been plenty of calls for strict access control to all schools. We were going to search all backpacks, have metal detectors at all entrances, run dogs through locker areas, place panic buttons in classrooms, install more cameras, increase police... -
iPads take to the field for security sales
By Geoff Kohl - Friday July 6, 2012
At the ESX tradeshow a week and a half ago, I had the pleasure of participating in a presentation with Gerrit Brusse, regional sales manager for U.S.A. Fire and Burglar Alarm, and Donald Natale, vice president of sales for Alarm.com. The topic was how the security industry was taking advantage of new technologies for the sales process, and I thought I’d take this week’s blog to share some business ideas with you that the speakers shared in the presentation. According to Natale, there are an estimated 5 billion mobile phones in the world, and over 1 billion of those are smartphones. That means that your potential customers, he said, are likely to be accustomed to instant access/remote access technologies. He said that in the past, your... -
Here come the surveillance drones
By Geoff Kohl - Friday June 15, 2012
Americans aren’t comfortable with drones in their hometowns. That was the short summary of a public opinion research poll about UAV drones conducted by Monmouth University Polling Institute. The poll research said that while most people are OK with UAV drones for search and rescue, they’re less excited, but generally OK with drones for border surveillance and tracking down criminals (2/3rds said they would support such use cases). Where they draw the line was the use of drones on themselves. Only a quarter of the respondents supported use of UAV drones for issuing speeding tickets, and about 4 out of 5 said they would have concerns with law enforcement loading on high-tech cameras and using the drones for surveillance. The... -
Rethinking the layered security approach
By Geoff Kohl - Friday June 1, 2012
Head over to the San Diego airport website and you'll get a couple key security messages. First is that you'll need a ticket and a photo ID to get past security, and secondly, you need to arrive two hour before your flight departs due to what San Diego is calling "longer lines and wait times." While those longer lines and wait times aren't always a concern -- the TSA is actually quite efficient at moving people through the checkpoints -- you can't forget your ticket and ID. Well, unless you're right out of jail and decide to skip the ticket counter and TSA checkpoint simply by pushing open a emergency exit fire door and walking onto the tarmac . When this incident happened, the San Diego Harbor Police (the team that oversees the... -
Managing your employees for business growth
By Geoff Kohl - Friday May 18, 2012
How do you grow your security systems integration business? That was the topic yesterday of a panel discussion at PSA-TEC 2012 in Westminster, Colo. The panel discussion brought together some of those honored in SD&I magazine’s 2012 guide to the fastest growing systems integrators – the SD&I Fast50. Chaired by SD&I magazine editor Deborah O’Mara, the panel included Kurt Will of Will Electronics, Curtis Nikel of Contava and Ron Oetjen of Intelligent Access Systems of NC to discuss how these integrators had made their business grow. Over the next hour-and-a-half, the discussion ranged from employee promotions to sales incentives to product choices, working with your end users, and cash flow management. Most important of all this was... -
Why we need global aviation security standards
By Geoff Kohl - Friday May 11, 2012
I’ll admit it. The first time I went through one of the TSA’s advanced imaging technology stations (which use millimeter wave like L3’s ProVision units or backscatter like those from Rapiscan), I was a little taken back. Someone I don’t know was going to see me naked? Maybe I should have gone to the gym more often. But mostly, I was caught up in the miniscule panic of the moment. Do I have everything out of my pockets? Did I have to remove my wallet? Turns out I did. Should I remove my belt? Yes, again. But I can keep my watch on? Actually, that Timex watch ended up getting me a quick post-scan wrist check by a friendly agent who wanted to make sure that my watch that “takes a licking and keeps on ticking” wasn’t actually... -
Corporate cybersecurity rises in prominence
By Geoff Kohl - Thursday May 10, 2012
I have to hand it to NPR. They had correspondent Tom Gjelten -- their security and economics correspondent -- tackle the issue of cybersecurity for corporations this week, and he did a great job. If you don't listen to NPR (maybe you like the banter of DJ's in the morning more than the voices of NPR morning edition hosts Renee Montagne, Steve Inskeep and David Greene), you can still get on-demand access to these solid stories on cyber-crime. Gjelten's three cyber-security stories absolutely worth reading & listening to: Cybersecurity Firms Ditch Defense, Learn To 'Hunt' Bill Would Have Businesses Foot Cost Of Cyberwar Cyber Briefings 'Scare The Bejeezus' Out Of CEOs Look, I get it -- many of you are selling... -
Incident command lessons from the FBI
By Geoff Kohl - Friday May 4, 2012
Chris Swecker, a 24-year veteran of the FBI and former head of corporate security for Bank of America (2006-2009), took the stage this week at Interactions 2012, a conference held in Nashville for users of NICE Systems. His presentation ranged from the impact of "big data" on security to the changes in the intelligence community since 9/11 and even the value of specialized analysts for corporate security, but one of his main messages was the value of a structured incident command approach. Chris knows a thing or two about incident command, drawing on his tenure as Former Acting Executive Assistant Director for the FBI at the peak of his federal career. It was a career that included many notable incidents and events to manage, from suicide... -
9 urban security and video technology lessons from Secured Cities
By Geoff Kohl - Friday April 27, 2012
A week ago, we concluded the Secured Cities conference in Chicago, Ill. The conference brings together law enforcement and technology leaders from urban areas, cities, towns and transit agencies for two days of education about topics such as using police crime cameras, creating transit-wide surveillance systems, homeland security, technology-based policing and more. In this week's blog post, I want to share a few take-aways from the conference to the broader security industry. The conference has been my project for a couple years now, having founded it in Atlanta in 2011, and it’s continued to grow – far beyond its initial focus solely on city video surveillance (although that is still a dominant topic at the conference). As... -
Security lessons from pulling wires
By Geoff Kohl - Friday April 13, 2012
I've been turning off the computer at night and working on my almost 100-year-old house doing some remodeling. One of the projects I've been doing is updating the electrical. It turns out that in the 1920s, they used a wiring method called knob and tube. This was long before the days of NM-B/Romex. The wiring was ungrounded and a positive and a neutral were run separately, about one foot apart, and wrapped in old wire insulation that seems to be made of natural materials, and which is extremely brittle. The "knob" was a porcelain clamps that kept the wire about an inch off the joists and which was also used for making 90-degree turns in the wiring. The "tube" was a porcelain tubes that allowed wiring to run through joist holes without...
