Video Surveillance

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Since it began operating in 2006 as Pennsylvania’s first slots casino, Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs has offered a little bit of everything. Spread across 300,000 square feet, the 24-hour gaming and entertainment complex boasts 2,500 slot machines, electronic blackjack and roulette and live harness racing, along with upscale restaurants, a food court and an expansive shopping area.

In order to achieve more while reducing costs, many enterprises’ security leaders have turned to automation. By adding thermal cameras as part of a larger intrusion detection system, security departments can reduce false alarm rates and even bring operational value back to the enterprise. Off the coast of Venezuela, there is a cluster of oil platforms.

 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. 

As the price gap between analog and IP cameras narrows and benefits to using IP cameras continue to grow, more security executives are investigating how they can incorporate the higher-end technology into their systems without requiring a full, expensive rip and replace. Luckily, many solutions exist to enable that jump over time, whether by taking advantage of renovations or slowly upgrading areas one camera at a time. 

 The U.S. Army plans to launch two stationary "blimps" at 10,000-feet in the air to protect the Washington D.C. area from cruise missiles and other possible air attacks. 

If the revelations by Edward Snowden proved anything, it is that the U.S., its allies and its enemies possess tremendous capabilities to know as much about individuals, groups, companies, and virtually any other entity, as they want. While Snowden’s revelations give specific insight to U.S. capabilities, many of the same technologies our intelligence apparatus use are either commercially available or within the ability of nations or non-state actors to acquire on their own. 

 Risk management too often is perilously fragmented and insufficiently funded. Managing the overall risk equation is assuredly a CEO-level and management team obligation. But the design and execution of effective strategies to identify and moderate risk is, of necessity, complex and typically spread among numerous organizational silos.