Keeping Security in Shape

CISCO Presenting Security of the Future

Cisco is a company that never ceases to amaze me. The article below sheds light into a business venture Cisco has secured with Harrah's Entertainment. As reported by Security Products Online:

Cisco To Implement IP Security, Surveillance Infrastructure For Harrah’s Entertainment

May 22, 2008

Harrah's Operating Company, a subsidiary of Harrah's Entertainment Inc., has signed a broad-based, 10-year global strategic agreement with Cisco. This strategic collaboration will help enable the delivery of compelling next-generation guest experiences through the use of Cisco products and allow Harrah's to remain at the forefront of innovation in the casino entertainment industry.

Harrah's has established a collaborative relationship with Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), the company's global strategic consulting arm. The strategic agreement envisions that Harrah's will continue to work together with IBSG and other Cisco divisions to assist Harrah's in implementing innovative technologies. This will help Harrah's to accelerate its status as an innovator and enhance its personalized guest experiences and world-class interactive customer relationship management capabilities.

This strategic collaboration will also facilitate the transformation of the company's digital backbone and the implementation of a next-generation security and surveillance infrastructure. The upgrade is designed to significantly improve facility security and safety, support new "smart service" initiatives that enable even more proactive employee service, and help Harrah's deliver on its bold vision to launch the next wave of industry-leading guest experiences.

Harrah's is upgrading its digital backbone to power numerous new capabilities over the next few years and is implementing a new digital security and surveillance infrastructure across North America and abroad. Upon completion of Harrah's digital migration program, Cisco will have helped enable the deployment of one of the largest Internet Protocol networking-based physical security implementations in the gaming and entertainment world.

Among the applications that Harrah's will implement to enhance its operational excellence and customer experience is Cisco digital video technology, which will provide greater visibility to guest areas such as hotel registration desks, valet parking areas and outdoor entertainment venues. This will enable Harrah's to have real-time responses to situations. For example, it could enable new capabilities that would allow additional staff to be dispatched to the hotel check-in area when guest registration lines become too long.

"As part of the 10-year global strategic agreement, Harrah's will collaborate with multiple Cisco technology groups to identify and create new and compelling guest offerings," said Bill Stuntz, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Physical Security business unit. "Through an ongoing dialogue started more than a year ago, Harrah's has embraced the network to serve as a highly secure platform to drive a new customer experience vision that will help it meet its long-term business objectives."

"Harrah's is focused on harnessing new capabilities to transform customer experiences in ways never before seen and in so doing, enabling Harrah's to remain an industry leader in customer service," said Howard Lock, director, transportation and hospitality for Cisco IBSG. "IBSG is helping Harrah's explore, validate and accelerate the adoption of innovation to deliver unique guest experiences, employee empowerment and operational excellence."

I think I should be calling my stock broker.

Convergence Continued

Security convergence isn't all bad; yes your "boots on the ground" security pro may be a little lost in the world of bandwidth, IP, switches, and routers, but at the end of the day CAT5 cable just maybe the lifeline that connects people with information at the speed of light.

Convergence

Convergence in today's world, is a mesh of two infrastructures, the IT infrastructure and the physical security infrastructure. More accurately, convergence is defined as the practice of having physical security systems, mostly at large corporations, be managed by IT applications. Convergence is nothing new, physical security measures have been slowly leaving the control of what I call "boots on the ground" security directors to the domain (no pun intended) of IT professionals who manage the physical security element as part of the overall IT infrastructure. As a matter of fact, one can argue that the Industrial Revolution was the first convergence of sorts since machines started replacing the jobs of people.

Even though many physical security managers have benefited by high tech innovations, there is still a cultural gap between the physical security manager who understands crime and human behavior and the IT geek who understands systems.

I get e-mails everyday about training opportunities on selling, implementing, and using IP based CCTV and access control systems; I am actually going to a course in June sponsored by ONSSI on how to apply network video recorders within a video surveillance system. I am looking forward to it.

But in return, I would like to offer a course for Web engineers and IT professionals, a 3-day survival and shooting course in the Negev desert in Israel. Since there is a such an industry wide movement in having security professionals learn IT systems, I think it only fair that IT professionals get a true understanding of what personal security is all about.

Video Analytics

I have spent years trying to educate human beings on identifying suspicious behaviors of people or objects that might threaten their place of employment, home, or lives. Well, unless your security force has been trained in Israel or are veterans of elite military or police units, the chances are much will go unnoticed unless your facility is armed with a state of the art video surveillance system that incorporates video analytics (VA).

VA takes the CCTV business and security in general to a whole new level.  Surveillance cameras via the supporting software can be programmed to identify a host of security threats - objects that are abandoned near an entrance to a facility, vehicles of a particular color that may have been used in a crime,  individuals entering into an area that has been determined to be off limits. The list goes on and on.

I am all for facilites adding such technology but NOT at the expense of having poorly trained security officers on site. Machines can't do everything like question individuals or return fire if needed.