Agencies and authorities that provide water, wastewater and dam services don’t face the same regulatory hurdles as power utilities, but they’re also often smaller and have fewer resources, housed as they generally are within municipal governments or other smaller entities.
Facilities of all stripes, ranging from churches and school districts, to healthcare centers to manufacturing plants, continue to move from hard keys to electronic access, or to upgrade their existing electronic access systems.
Along with the holy grail of tighter overall security, the benefits of electronic access control systems include a better handle on who’s coming and going, the ability to restrict access to certain times and places depending on a person’s function in the organization, the ability to remotely control access, the extra assurance a company or organization can give its customers, and the lack of need for rekeying doors or replacing lost keys.
Consolidation, technology, training and partnerships are among the watchwords for security officer firms and their clients as the calendar turns toward 2017.
Concerns about cybersecurity are overtaking those about physical security in the banking sector, although perhaps most front-burner have been issues that cross over into both realms.
College campuses historically have been shy about emphasizing their security policies and procedures, not wanting anxious parents or prospective students to think that a visible security force, camera equipment or other evidence of being watchful means their students are particularly vulnerable.
Hospitals and medical centers face a panoply of threats and challenges around data security, yet the healthcare field has not yet responded as quickly as others, according to chief information security officers (CISOs) and others close to such institutions.
When it comes to cybersecurity, school districts don’t present the content-rich targets that major corporations or government agencies might, but they also don’t have the same resources to protect themselves, says Jim Flanagan, chief learning service officer at the International Society for Technology in Education.
An engaged leadership team already understands the greater domain awareness provided by converged surveillance systems, but how about the next step toward robust risk management: cybersecurity and cyberspecific insurance?