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  • Having Solved All Other Problems, FEMA Announces New Icon.
    By Marleah Blades - Thursday November 30, 2006
    Today on the newswire I saw a story announcing that FEMA is adopting a new symbol for emergency management “to call on America not to become complacent about preparedness.†(I’m sure many Americans would like to turn around and tell FEMA exactly the same thing.) The symbol is meant to replace the old “civil defense†triangle-in-a-circle icon that appeared on fallout supplies in the 50s and 60s. Anybody else think there are some skewed priorities here? The announcement suffers some unfortunate timing, without a doubt. It comes the same day news outlets picked up on a federal judge’s ruling that FEMA unconstitutionally stopped payment to Katrina victims in February without stated cause. I’m...

  • Video Games
    By Greg McConnell - Tuesday November 28, 2006
    Yesterday I came across an SIW article saying rumors are swirling around  IBM possibly acquiring Verint . Time will tell if this becomes a reality, but it got me to thinking once again about convergence in the security industry, especially when it comes to IT big boys like Cisco, IBM, and others. We are undoubtedly in an era where technologies are converging in the security industry at an unprecedented pace with major ramifications for all involved.  Yes, we know that "everything is going onto the network," and ultimately the network will be wireless at the user level.  However, which companies will settle into the driver's seat and which will become--for lack of a better phrase--road kill? It's...

  • Happy Holidays. Please Downgrade to Compatible Version.
    By Marleah Blades - Thursday November 16, 2006
    It’s that time of year, folks. Wal-Mart’s garden department has evaporated to make room for plastic wreaths and tacky inflatable elves, Target and Gap commercials have become (amazingly) more annoying than usual, and even though I haven’t bought my Thanksgiving Tofurkey yet, my mailbox is filled with red-and-green flyers. Yes, we’re entering into that cornerstone of capitalism, that green-eyed, debt-soaked time we call The Holiday Season (insert soap-opera-style dramatic swell here). Besides the T.M.X. Elmo and the PlayStation 3, one of the most hyped product releases of this year’s spend-o-rama is Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player, which was released Tuesday with more of a splat than a bang. Critics...

  • A Story of Toothpaste and the Airport Checkpoint
    By Geoff Kohl - Friday November 10, 2006
    It's only appropriate that I address this odd bit of news, since this blog is somewhat appropriately titled The Security Check. And since the most common "security check" that American citizens go through is the TSA security check before they can go to airport gates...well, you get the point. There's a company called Dentakit.com that registered on my security radar this morning. It makes and sells a lot of speciality dental hygiene products, including the original Dentakit for braces. They just started selling an item that is a curious shoe-in for TSA security. The company is selling toothbrushes that come pre-loaded with dry toothpaste powder. Ok, I'll admit, the idea is a bit over the top, since TSA doesn't exactly prohibit air...

  • Dems Now Get A Shot At Screwing Up The Works
    By Steve - Friday November 10, 2006
    My wife accuses me of being a Republican when it comes to politics. Of course she has mistakenly taken my fiscal conservatism to mean I support the present regime in Washington. If she had checked my Georgia ballot card in yesterday's election booth she would have seen it was almost straight-lined Libertarian. I'm sure I share the opinion of many tired Americans who have grown weary of the partisan politics and total lack of concern of today's elected officials for the public they serve. OK, so the Democrats have ousted the Republicans in both the House and Senate. What does that mean for the country? Probably not much. We have just seen the most do-nothing Congress in the history of this country accomplish little more than...

  • In false alarms, enough is enough
    By Geoff Kohl - Thursday November 2, 2006
    A recent news story on Vindy.com,  a news website serving Youngtown, Ohio, and the surrounding valley, is an example of why the burglar alarm industry sometimes can't get any respect.  Vindy.com reported about the alarm system at  Lighthouse Ministries in Youngstown -- an alarm system that had just given its 46th false alarm in the month of October -- not 46 for the year, but for the month! The police put the location on its non-response list. They should have put it on there months ago, since the article reports that October wasn't the first month of their high false rate. But the real problem here is that the monitoring company should have identified this long before it left a bitter taste in the mouth of...

  • I love it when a plan comes together
    By Greg McConnell - Wednesday November 1, 2006
    For many security dealers, the most important thing about their company is its reputation.  Period. As in any business, a company that has a good reputation will likely see other good things follow suit, such as happy customers, referrals, and increased profits. Of course, getting that good reputation requires you to communicate well with your clients and do excellent work at a competitive price.  It also means that when things go wrong, you do everything possible to reach a satisfactory solution for the customer. I've had dealers in the past tell me that, in the short term, one employee can essentially ruin years of good PR.  Granted, that might seem extreme, but it's a legitimate consideration...

  • Fact or Fiction?
    By Marleah Blades - Friday October 27, 2006
    On Tuesday, Slashdot.org linked to a report issued by the DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee that strongly recommended against the use of RFID in government-mandated cards and documents. You can view the report here: http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy_advcom_rpt_rfid_draft.pdf .   This news comes on the heels of some other recent developments in RFID, including the October 19 announcement that researchers at the University College London planned to develop a system of tagging all airline passengers with RFID tags to allow their movements to be tracked. (Geoff Kohl raised some very legitimate questions about this project in last week's Security Week that Was column...

  • Wanna be invisible?
    By Greg McConnell - Monday October 23, 2006
    Scientists at Duke University report that early experiments indicate that it will one day be possible to "cloak" objects (make them invisible).  Of course, time will tell, but I still think it's an interesting topic.  You can read about it here . Here's a clip from the USA Today article, "A prototype so far only hides objects from microwaves, not from visible light, so the human eye can still see the objects. But scientists say it shows the technology is feasible. Here's how it works: Electromagnetic waves scatter and reflect when they strike objects, and the eye picks up this reflection to see. The new technology relies on materials that theoretically can bend electromagnetic waves, including visible light, around objects as...

  • Know Your Enemy
    By Marleah Blades - Thursday October 19, 2006
    This week I read an op-ed in the New York Times in which writer Jeff Stein described the responses he received when he asked U.S. counterterrorism officials and members of Congress whether they know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/opinion/17stein.html ) To his purported surprise, a number of his subjects had no idea. Stein argued that if the decision makers in our War on Terror are underinformed, their decisions may put the country in more danger. I'm not trying to turn this blog into a political forum; this article put me in mind of an important issue in corporate security. As much as our national security concerns have been changing over the last few years, this should serve as a...