When most people think of fiber optics today, they typically associate it with high-speed internet services, such as Google Fiber; however, the technology itself is capable of much more than merely conducting high volumes of online traffic at a rapid pace. Fiber optic sensing solutions have been used for some time in a wide array of perimeter security applications to detect suspected intrusions.
The slightest deviation in the beams of light that are sent through a fiber optic cable, which are made up of thin strands of plastic or glass, makes them ideal for detecting vibrations above ground or along a fence. But while these solutions have been popular among end-users and integrators in certain vertical markets, they haven’t been adopted with great regularity in more mainstream commercial security projects.
Enter the recently launched Fiber Optic Sensing Association (FOSA), which is devoted to educating industry and government leaders about the benefits of the technology and its various applications. According to Thomas Cohen, executive director for FOSA, the association was formed by a group of technology companies that had a common interest in making their solutions known to a broader market.
“This group of companies put together a mission to make the private sector and other parts of the industry that would use these technologies aware of what they’re doing, the capabilities and educate them as well about the possibilities,” Cohen says.
With regards to education, Cohen says the association will be putting a number of different resources, such as whitepapers, on their website to help inform people about the capabilities of the technology from both a security and operational (checking for leaks in pipelines, cracks in railways, etc.) monitoring perspective. They also plan to host webinars and begin putting out a regular newsletter in the coming weeks.
“We are also going to have direct contact with potential users of the technology – both public and private sector, so you can imagine various conferences and events,” Cohen adds. “This is a process where we are going to keep pushing information out as we talk to these various parties, find out what else they need, try to respond to that, and keep building something.”
Lynn Mattice, managing director of management consulting firm Mattice & Associates and the former CSO of Boston Scientific, says there are myriad applications for fiber optic sensing technology when it comes to the corporate realm even beyond installing it on a fence line or burying it under the ground.
“In a port, for example, you could put this under water because fiber optic cable works well under water and you could put sensors on it, so now you’ve got acoustic and all kinds of activities that you can monitor coming into your port,” Mattice explains. “The types of sensors and the ability to deploy them are, frankly, only limited by the imagination and focusing on what are the specific risks associated with the environment you’re trying to protect.”
Mattice, who spoke earlier this week at a gathering of FOSA member companies in Washington, D.C., believes there are a number of ways to go about increasing awareness and raising the education-level of security end-users and integrators alike about the benefits of fiber optics, but he says the main thing that needs to happen within the security industry is for manufacturers to begin to truly understand the risks and regulatory compliance issues facing organizations today in their respective sectors.
“They need to build products that help individuals, companies and governments counter those risks, compliance requirements and regulatory requirements but have flexibility built into them that allow for adjustments to address changes in those governance, risk and compliance (GRC) environments,” Mattice says. “GRC is a critical issue and is something that very few people focus on. The manufacturing environment has pretty much been focused on the 'Field of Dreams' approach of ‘build it and they will come.’ They need to understand their ultimate end-customers’ environment better than their customers do if they are going to effectively counter those risks.”
Along with that, Mattice says that security integrators need to have an even more thorough understanding of client environments and conduct GRC reviews so they can make technology recommendations that flexibly address these concerns.
“Companies no longer just want to simply tear out and replace, they want to have systems that adjust to the environments that they are in, so it’s incumbent upon the integrators and the manufacturers to understand that,” he adds. “The integrators then have to take one step more and build a business case because folks are so busy and lean today that they don’t have time to address this.”
Because fiber optics will be running over corporate networks, Mattice says it is also critical that manufacturers take cyber risks into account as they’re building their products to ensure they are “hack-proof” and not creating another problem for the business.
“That’s one of the things we ran into with IP cameras. Some IP camera manufacturers haven’t taken into account the things that they need to do to ensure these things can’t get hacked,” he says. “As a result, in IT environments, CIOs are becoming very reticent about putting these kinds of systems onto their networks.”
While the general impression has been that fiber optics are simply too expensive to deploy in most commercial security projects, Mattice says the technology has come down substantially in price in recent years as the volume of the cabling has increased to meet rising demand.
“The costs associated with fiber optic cable have come down dramatically and the ability to deploy solutions is phenomenal. The nice thing about it is you can have multiple technologies running on the same fiber optic cable and couple it in with your camera system and as you have a sensor deployed, you can utilize other types of technology to investigate (alarms),” Mattice explains. “It truly becomes the opportunity for a fully integrated system and a smart system. As this technology of sensors evolves, the focus on communicating with other sensors, devices and managing software will allow this kind of interoperability that I believe will become a holistic solution.”
For more information about FOSA and the solutions offered by its member companies, visit www.fiberopticsensing.org.
