In recent years, “cyber” has monopolized most of the serious coverage in the security industry, and rightly so, given the underprepared stance of many government and commercial organizations in the face of persistent “leakage” of information and malicious attacks. Yet too often, the equivalent dialogue around physical security has been disappointingly predictable. The industry fixates on pixel counts and IP versus analog. The more enlightened may debate the benefits of the latest breakthrough technology or an attempt at greater industry cooperation. At this point, insert “video analytics” and “ONVIF interoperability,” or any one of a hundred themes.
Yet there is a debate that isn’t being had: a debate about outcomes and cost-effectiveness, and about pre-emptive over reactive, agility over brute force, proportionate measures versus uniformity. It’s a debate that embraces new technologies yet isn’t enslaved to them. And it’s equally as relevant to a government about to spend millions on a complex and costly border security project as it is to a commercial entity seeking to secure vulnerable sites. It’s a debate that reorients an organization’s security stance to become more adaptable, like that of their adversaries, by shifting the focus to more targeted, distributed and rapidly deployable solutions. But most of all, by equipping the operator – the one tasked with actually identifying and intercepting any threat – to be a more effective part of the response.