Hi, This is Chris Berry and here is my company blog.
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Written by Polarismd
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Wednesday, 21 May 2008 00:00 |
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Hi, I am the managing director of Initsys Ltd, and here are some of the things I find interesting about our industry and life in general. |
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Last Updated on Sunday, 29 June 2008 21:39 |
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EN Standards - A waste of time? |
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Written by Christopher Berry
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Thursday, 28 August 2008 21:14 |
Sometimes I absolutely despair about our industry, or maybe it's Europe?
EN standards - we write them, change them if we don't understand them, we change them again and then we ignore them.
Let's take EN50136 as an example (the alarm signalling standard).
Initial consultation begain in 1995 (yes, that IS 1995), it was ratified in 1999 and released that year. It took four years for general adoption and then just to make it more complicated it was proposed that it was extended to cover IP. Why? when it was written in 95 full consultation was made with Cisco/3Com and other majors in networking.
What a waste of time, what does this "new" section bring that was not already covered in the earlier editions? Or was change proposed simply because some companies were not ready for IP - Mmmmm?
What do you think? Or more importantly do you care?
I guess some people have not heard of KiSS. The new revision is over complicated and stupid and more important unworkable.
And with EN standards testing and performance criteria being totally ignored by insurers, police and specifiers why are we bothering?
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Last Updated on Monday, 08 March 2010 15:13 |
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Are you as secure as you think you are? |
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Written by PJMC
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Friday, 19 March 2010 14:14 |
 You may be reading this confident in the fact that you have an installed intruder alarm but have you ever asked yourself how secure that system might actually be against a determined attack by people with a detailed understanding of the technology that is being deployed?
The fact is that the technology deployed by many alarm systems is typically up to 25 years old and, with the continued reliance on primary alarm signalling in the UK, there is only so much that can be done to make them secure. They offer no real anti-intrusion capabilities in comparison with the latest generation of IP-based systems that incorporate many of the highest security measures typically found on internet banking and shopping sites.
A recession is often a primary driver for change and in the 1970’s we saw the early growth of electronic security and the introduction of antecedent signalling systems. The recession in the early 1990’s was a catalyst for the growth in multi-channel CCTV and more advanced alarm signalling. But will all this investment continue to deliver the required results? What is clear is that our reliance on CCTV as a way of solving crime has already been proved as ineffective, unless it's event driven and installed to meet best practice guidelines.
In the current economic climate, businesses of all sizes will place greater reliance on their security. As theft and the demands for greater levels of security continues to rise, manufacturers and installers should anticipate an increase in litigation from companies who expected more from the electronic security systems they were sold .
These days, having an intruder alarm installed is no guarantee of protection and we are already starting to see a rise in the number of break-ins to apparently secure premises that no-one can understand or explain how they might have happened. Perhaps this is an early sign of the vulnerability of systems that are still largely protected by analogue modem technology.
What is clear is that an unwillingness to adopt new technology is costing insurance companies millions of pounds in claims paid out as well as increasing the cost of essential insurance for business and individuals through inflation-busting rises in premiums. How many payouts will insurance companies make until they realise that there are more effective ways of maintaining the security of these systems.
The change to more advanced technology solutions will be lead by insurance companies and, without this impetus, nothing is likely to change. But why is it that they have been so slow to adopt technology that has been fully tested, meets international standards and is proven to deliver significant improvements in security across Europe? Why also have regulators, shareholders and other stakeholders failed to grasp the significant threats posed by the continued reliance on outdated intruder alarms?
It is a fact that insurance companies have tended to believe the scare stories put out by those with vested interests in maintaining the sales of outdated systems without really understanding the risks. Up to now they have not been prepared to accept that the new generation of IP-based systems can be intrinsically more secure and have believed all the negatives about IP and the Internet without looking at all the positive results.
One such development has been sequential verification, for which international standards were ratified back in 1996, yet despite being already widely adopted across Europe, is still not available in the UK.
When deployed, sequential verification provides a clear indication of activations and any changes in the status of detectors as intruders move through different zones in a building. This enables control room operators to deliver a considerably higher level of monitoring by providing the ability to follow the movement of intruders from point of entry, whether this be a window, door or fire exit. This can be further enhanced by using the latest advanced control room software from companies such as Initsys that merges the functionality of existing intruder alarms and CCTV surveillance systems to provide additional visual verification capabilities. Interestingly, many of these systems are compatible with existing analogue and digital CCTV cameras including the latest IP cameras, enabling the operational capability of an existing security network to be enhanced without having to upgrade the whole system.
A key functionality of these systems is their ability to automatically connect to the CCTV camera nearest to the location where an activation has taken place and automatically operate the pan, tilt and zoom functions enabling events to be quickly reviewed and recorded. They also automatically show views of the nearest fire exits, doors and windows with live streaming of images from these locations as well as images from the scene immediately before and after activations have occurred.
Sequential verification provides control room operators with important information that can help determine the type of incident. For example, if only one internal sensor activates, that is probably a sign of a problem with a detector. If all the internal detectors went off simultaneously, that would indicate that there had been an event such as an electricity surge or lighting strike as it is most unlikely that an intruder or intruders would be able to activate all the sensors at the same time. Sequential verification will result in a significant reduction in the number of false alarms compared to traditional monitoring where signals received in the control are automatically presumed to be genuine with the police called out to attend as quickly as possible.
However, once again the UK’s security industry has again watered down these international standards to accept just two detector activations as being sequential. Whilst this does work up to a point to reduce the incidence of false alarms, it has not eliminated them by any stretch of the imagination. If the full standard had been adopted, they would have been all but eliminated.
In the UK we tend to get into our comfort zones and only react when something forces us to take action. What is the major event is going to make everyone sit up and take positive steps towards ensuring that the same thing cannot happen to them. What would happen if one of the UK’s leading monitoring companies found that their systems were compromised? How would insurance companies and alarm companies cope with the consequences? Technically, this scenario is not that far-fetched.
The question really is whether you should be waiting for your insurance company to refuse to renew your policy unless you update your systems or whether you should be acting now to review the risks and take steps to ensure that your business is protected.
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Last Updated on Friday, 19 March 2010 14:18 |
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