Roger Williams University saves time, money and improves service, accuracy, workflows with Quantum Secure's SAFE middleware for physical identity management

At the same time Roger Williams University was growing into new academic and residence buildings, it was outgrowing its physical identity and access control solutions.

It was clear two resident locksmiths would be no match for two new academic buildings, a new admissions and alumni center and a new, 347-bed residence hall plus existing facilities at the university's 140-acre campus perched above Mount Hope Bay in Rhode Island.

This "massive physical growth" was highlighting the limitation of the university's manual processes for issuing hard and soft keys to faculty, staff and about 6,000 resident undergrad and graduate students. "The operational efficiency just wasn't there," said Joseph Pangborn, vice president and chief information officer for the university, speaking during a webinar presented early in August by Quantum Secure. 

A series of successful partnerships between the Port of Houston Authority, the Texas state government, and local private industries have captured the attention of the Department of Homeland Security which sees them as a potential model to strengthen port security initiatives around the country.

According to Bill Crews, pictured, port security & emergency operations manager for the Port of Houston Authority, the federal government has taken an interest in several of the port's partnership  initiatives, including the state's creation of the Houston Ship Channel Security District, with an eye toward adapting them in other locations, Crews made his remarks Wednesday at the monthly meeting of ASIS's Houston Chapter.

The security district was set up through state legislation and is designed akin to a municipal utility district, The district, which has taxing authority, raises funds for the maintenance and repair of security infrastructure, including video surveillance, access control and command and control systems, at the port. While the DHS port security grant program provides funds for the purchase of security technology, those funds do not cover upkeep. The security district, which has seven board members from private sector companies based in the port area, plus representatives from the port authority and the city governments in the port vicinity, fills that gap, Crews said.

IQinVision has begun building a selection of downloadable applications for its line of digital cameras, modeling the approach Apple is using with its popular iPhone.

Users of IQinVision cameras can currently choose from a menu of 15 applications that boost the value of their devices, said Paul Bodell, chief marketing officer for IQinVision. The group includes two from third-parties. Agent Vi is providing downloadable analytics. Viasys also is providing analytics along with a tool for filtering unwanted video at the camera. Most of the apps are designed to interact with image data gathered by the camera before it is altered through processing or compression, thereby affording users that much more of a direct return on the premium they pay for a greatly enhanced image.

The program also offers a way for users to add immediate value to their HD and megapixel  cameras, said Bodell, Analytics and perimeter alarms may useful on a camera mounted near the side entrance of a building, and access control apps might fit well on a camera near the main entrance.

Authenticate Internally Once, Access Many Outside Apps

(Why read this? Because identity federation--or extending an identity outside an enterprise so it can access the enterprise's various partners logically and/or physically--is growing among vertical industries and via cloud computing. Ensuring that identity is really who it is thought to be is critical, which brings up strong authentication, which is an area in which business users, IT and physical security specialists should collaborate on solutions.)

Identity and password proliferation are painful for most users and enterprises, with password reset requests remaining big, frustrating business for help desks.  Extend those problems beyond the enterprise domain out to trading partner systems and you have a situation ripe for disgruntled users, as BAE Systems can attest.

Employees of the big aerospace & defense firm were using applications from Herndon, Va.-based Exostar to share data with trading partners. However, it wasn't going as smoothly as it might. "The user experience was atrocious," said Malcolm Carrie, head of strategy and architecture in the corporate IT office at BAE Systems.  

He said users disliked logging into the BAE Systems network using company credentials, then having to use completely different user ID and password formats to log in separately to Exostar's cloud-based Managed Access Gateway identity federation tool and/or external trading partner systems . Further, their unhappiness with the password situation was scaring off other internal prospective system users, said Carrie.

To solve the issue, BAE Systems recently deployed the Enterprise Access Gateway, a feature that's part of Exostar's Managed Access Gateway.

"Without the Enterprise Access Gateway, every access to every separate trading partner application was a separate authentication," said Carrie.  Each authentication was determined by the trading partners' requirements, so there was no uniformity.
 

A guest post from Allan McHale (pictured), director at Memoori Ltd., a market research firm based in Amersham, U.K.

After the battering it has had over the last two years, the security industry has performed well over the first half of this year and is proving to be in good shape. It will need to be, because the European debt problems that came to the forefront in July cast a shadow on any  prospects that the world economy might soon return to stable growth.

The industry cannot expect all of its relief to derive from a more buoyant economy. While the emerging markets of China, India and Brazil look set to continue growing, they will not fill the gap for manufacturers based in the West. Suppliers will need to grind more out of fewer prospects. This means a continuing focus on all aspects of the product mix, but particularly delivering the type of strategic benefits to customers that reduce their operating costs and provide a measurable return on their investment. Nothing less will ensure a profitable growing business for suppliers.

Verint Systems Inc. and EMC Corp. are partnering to deliver the video surveillance system at the new KFC Yum! Center (model pictured) in Louisville, Ky., a sports and concert arena scheduled to open Oct. 10.

The system will manage and store video from a network of Verint VGA cameras and Arecont Vision 3-, 5- and 8-megapixel cameras in the arena and its adjacent 975-car parking garage.

Verint and EMC were worked more than a year to win the deal, said John McKenzie, business development manager for EMC Physical Security, and beat out a number of bidders, including one "local" supplier of end-to-end proprietary video systems that McKenzie declined to name, although it is common knowledge that Louisville is home to the Honeywell Security Group.  

Appliance-Based PACS Challenge Server-Based Market

The word "appliance" conjures up images of sturdy tools and machines, workhorses of kitchen and garage, invested in once, then operating for years with little maintenance and not much thought.

That's an analogy vendors of physical access control (PAC) appliances find quite applicable to their products. "Our nickname for the product was 'toaster,' said John Szczygiel, executive vice president, Brivo Systems, which formally introduced its OnSite Aparato PAC appliance in June.

PAC appliances are much more sophisticated than toasters, evident in the PAC appliance offerings from Brivo, PlaSec Inc., and S2 Security Corp. Each appliance is a powerful computer in its own right, with all the features expected of a traditional, server-based PACS and then some. Yet the form does matter, because it delivers the functionality with easier implementation and lower maintenance costs than server-based systems, but doesn't require end-users to be IT whizzes or to learn new interfaces, say integrators familiar with PAC appliances. Further, these companies have built their appliances on open standards, making integration and data sharing with other systems much easier.

"This is the way security technology is going," said Tony Belotto, division manager, Hypower Security Services Inc., Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, an S2 Security Corp. authorized dealer.

Others are more cautious. "This is relatively new stuff, so it does remain to be seen how effective and successful it will be in the marketplace," said Joe Costa, CEO, Delex Fairfax Integrated Security Systems, in Vienna, Va., who has evaluated the PlaSec offerings.

Physical security information management systems (PSIMs) are becoming a critical component as municipal and county governments consolidate emergency dispatch systems. Not only does PSIM permit police, fire and ambulance calls to be handled from a central point, it can provide information from other sources, particularly various networks of video cameras, in order to add to the amount of data first responders have before they arrive at the scene.

VidSys last week announced that has integrated its open PSIM platform with Northrop Grumman's CommandPoint computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system. Cities such as Los Angeles and New York that use the CommandPoint and VidSys systems, are now able to collate data from video systems, GPS systems and other geographic databases to literally give responders better view of a situation.

Case Study: Port of Wilmington, Delaware, Keeps Timely Tabs on TWIC Validity with PIVCheck Plus by Codebench and Honeywell Pro-Watch Integration

Updated July 1, 2010

The Port of Wilmington, Delaware, leads the nation's ports in several categories: it's the number one port in North America for imports of fresh fruit, bananas, and orange juice concentrate. With approximately 800,000 square feet of chilled and freezer storage space available, plus 16,000 square feet of controlled atmosphere capability, it ranks as the nation's largest dockside cold storage facility. It's also the first and busiest port on the Delaware River, handling more than 4 million tons of cargo annually, including cattle, petroleum, autos and more, in addition to fruit.

The Port of Wilmington claims another first: In October 2007, it became the first port to introduce the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC). That's the smart credential mandated by the Maritime Transportation Security Act. And now, Wilmington has introduced another innovation: collecting data from TWIC credentials to be stored and used by its Honeywell Pro-Watch security management system, via middleware software, called PIVCheck Plus, from Codebench. Advantech, based in Dover, Del., was the integrator.
 

Interoperability may no longer be enough. Vendors of IP-based surveillance cameras and video management systems are upping the ante on integration certification, providing integrators and users with documented validation of more comprehensive functional integrity between their respective platforms..

As IP drives more user interest in assembling best-of-breed solutions, and as standards from groups such as the Open Network Video Interface Forum (ONVIF) and the Physical Security Interaoperability Alliance (PSIA) are incorporated into commercial products, vendors find they need a stronger differentiator beyond basic plug and play.

Last week's joint announcement from video management system supplier 3VR and Arecont Vision is an example. 3VR has certified Arecont Vision's full line of megapixel cameras as part of its SmartCam program while Arecont Vision said that 3VR had completed participatory testing in the camera maker's MegLAB program and had been certified in three areas: camera integration, feature integration and load testing.