Today’s
mobile phones combine nearly all functionality offered by separate portable
devices, making it a great advantage to the business, security and consumer
users who want to have everything at hand, and do not want to carry too many
gadgets or be afraid of leaving something behind.
In
the headlines we read much more about leadership failures than leadership
successes. The security professional aspiring to that coveted corporate
executive position may find it daunting to watch the parade of fiascos and
consequences the past several years have brought: Enron, HP, BAE, HealthSouth,
Vivendi, Parmalat.
Those executives who cover security at industrial and manufacturing enterprises see a lot more today including the impact of the economy, metal theft and more sophisticated employee threats.
I’ve worked in the security industry for
several decades but there was always one conundrum that I couldn’t explain. Why
aren’t best practices always practiced?
Imagine that right
before you drove home from work, someone told you that all the old traffic laws
had changed forever: red no longer meant stop and green no longer meant go. In
fact, all of the signs that used to guide you were no longer valid.
Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D.,
CPP, offers his My Turn only slightly in jest. He is a vulnerability assessor
in physical security on the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National
Laboratory in Illinois.
Good
physical asset controls do not just happen. The process takes experience,
dedication, planning and superior communication. The same is true for designing
security systems for an existing or new building.
Less
than a decade ago, highway transit authorities needed a convenient,
user-friendly way to identify vehicles and collect tolls while simultaneously
reducing delays at collection points.
Daily newspaper articles and television news broadcasts draw audiences into the horrors of terrorist attacks, graphically display the mighty power of Mother Nature or attempt to explain the invisible threat of pandemic influenza.
Are you prepared for a
disaster that could cripple your facility? According to the Department of Labor
93 percent of businesses that experience a disaster go out of business within 5
years.
At the Video Content Analysis conference I co-chaired earlier this year, Hal Weaver, capital implementation and product merchant with The Home Depot, said that video analysis has transformed into a multi-dimensional business tool.
Distributed
denial of service (DDoS) attacks are designed to overwhelm a target network
with resource requests, leaving the victim unable to handle legitimate
requests.
Looking for a way to reduce recurring operating costs for the system, the IT staff at Davidson College turned to a long-time security and life safety systems integration partner.
Loading
and unloading containers at one of the world’s busiest ports is a challenge,
even when things go perfectly. In a major security video upgrade, one huge
facility saw flexibility and cost saving in turning away from traditional
cabling.
