February 2015www.security-today.com

NETWORKINGNETWORKINGNETWORKINGNETWORKINGNETWORKINGNETWORKING SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY

ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE

Data is the main player in making security decisions

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ON THE FAST TRACKData has been with man since the dawn of time

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A Special Section to Security Products

COMPLETELY ON LINEWhy they are essential to the networking mission

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EDITORIAL STAFFEditor-in-Chief/Associate Publisher Ralph C. JensenSenior Editor Lindsay PageE-news Editor Brent Dirks

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The information in this magazine has not undergone any formal testing by 1105 Media Inc. and is distributed without any warranty expressed or implied. Implementation or use of any information contained herein is the reader’s sole responsibility. While the information has been reviewed for accuracy, there is no guarantee that the same or similar results may be achieved in all environments. Technical inaccuracies may result from printing errors and/or new developments in the industry.

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www.security-today.com February 2015 | Volume 9, No. 1

NS2 0 2 1 5 | N E T W O R K I N G S E C U R I T Y

NETWORKING SECURITYNETWORKING SECURITYNETWORKING SECURITYWhere IT Security and Physical Security ConvergeWhere IT Security and Physical Security ConvergeWhere IT Security and Physical Security ConvergeWhere IT Security and Physical Security ConvergeWhere IT Security and Physical Security ConvergeWhere IT Security and Physical Security Converge

Features

NS6 Security Technology ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCEData is the main player in making security decisionsBy Ajay Jain

NS8 Integrated SystemsON THE FAST TRACKData has been with man since the dawn of timeBy Brian McIlravey

NS10 Networking Solutions ON THE EDGE OF INNOVATIONIP video surveillance market solutions building strong industry partnershipsBy Nicole Segura

Departments

NS4Enterby Ralph C. Jensen

Data As a Decision Maker

NS14Exitby Bud Broomhead

Completely OnlineWhy they are essential to the networking mission

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ENTERBy Ralph C. Jensen

NS4

DATA AS A DECISIONMAKERThe best way to make any decision is by col-lecting as much data as possible. The more information you have, the better your decision will be.

Ajay Jain, president of Quantum Secure, points out in our cover story that security deci-sions are based on data. The more you have, the better the decisions. However, Jain points out

that is not always the case, in part, because of the amount of data being collected by an increasing number of devises.

“More than 95 percent of alarms are false,” Jain said. “We tend to respond slowly because there is a good chance that the alarm isn’t valid.”

I think you will find Jain’s comments and analysis very inter-esting. Consider this: “The patterns or trends that result from analyzing the data help identify certain predictors that could in-dicate that an incident may occur.”

This could be huge, considering the amount of data that is stolen year after year. Insider threats are increasingly prevalent, and some statistics reveal that insider threats are responsible for nearly half of all security breaches.

Also inside, one of our freelance writers interviewed Tom Galvin, president of Razberi Technologies, who addressed ques-tions about IP networking. He said networking has been around for a long time, but for the security industry, its lifespace has been about a decade.

Galvin takes no credit for investing IP networking, megapixel cameras or an NVR, but what they have put together is a way to combine all these things into a simplified package. Razberi Tech-nologies has been able to take the complexity of IP networking and put the technology into simplified form factors. This helps the security integrator do their job at a lower cost.

How is this all completed? “Razberi has brought the market the concept of a distributed

architecture where they have the server in a distributed environ-ment and closer out to the edge; a practice that has not been done as much with the industry move to centralization,” said Reinier Tu-inzing, strategic alliance manager at Milestone Systems, America.

From this partnership, Milestone Systems has been able to pull the information collected on the ServerSwitch back to an op-eration center and make the entire network function.

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S E C U R I T Y T E C H N O L O G Y

NS6 0 2 1 5 | N E T W O R K I N G S E C U R I T Y

ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCEData is the main player in making security decisionsBy Ajay Jain

All security decisions are based on data. So, it would stand to reason that the more data organizations are able to collect, the more informed their security teams will be and, by extension, the better the decisions they make will be. Sadly, that’s not always the

case thanks in large part to the sheer—and staggering—amount of data that is being collected today by an increasing number of devices and systems. Much of this “big data” has significant implications for security and when properly sorted, searched and executed, can become incredibly useful and actionable intelligence.

The underlying problem with the current security approach is that it does not involve analyzing available data. Alarm-based se-curity processes are mainly reactive in nature. And, because more than 95 percent of alarms are false, we tend to respond slowly because there’s a good chance that the alarm isn’t valid.

In essence, the alarm monitoring process itself has inadver-tently trained people that the data is so noisy as a result of the overwhelming number of false alarms that they won’t be able to accomplish their job and identify a threat as it occurs in real time. As a result, threats often go undetected; or by the time something happens, it’s too late to do anything about it.

Case in point: there have been many security breaches where there was actually enough relevant data located within dispa-rate sources to warn of a possible security risk, but no way for the organization to extrapolate actionable intelligence from that data. For many organizations, simply organizing the vast quan-

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tity of security- and incident-related data, let alone analyzing it and utilizing it to make smart decisions, poses a tremendous challenge. Many lack a comprehensive ap-proach to making sense of all this data, and as a result end up missing potential opportunities and benefits that it presents.

Real-time predictive analytics technol-ogy focuses on analyzing the metadata from disparate systems and devices to identify statistical patterns and trends. Of-ten, this requires examining data over the course of months or years to accurately predict what may occur at a given time. The patterns or trends that result from analyzing the data help identify certain predictors that could indicate that an inci-dent may occur.

Insider threat is an increasingly preva-lent security concern for organizations, with some statistics suggesting it is the reason behind nearly half of all security breaches. In some cases, these types of in-cidents can be devastating, but not all in-sider threat is obvious or destructive.

Rather, it could be as simple as a frus-trated sales rep downloading his contacts or an engineer taking code before they leave a company. Given the complex psychology behind it, insider threat can be incredibly difficult to understand and predict. This is where big data comes in, allowing security to analyze information and look at patterns across a large number of employees over a long time period to identify things that may not be obvious or intuitive.

From this analysis, incidents that could indicate potential insider threats, known as indicators of compromise, begin to emerge. A triggering event, such as a bad performance review, a missed promotion or something similar may be the trigger that precedes an insider breach, and there-fore can serve as an indicator.

Information related to these events is stored in the HR system and can be used to generate an initial red flag that an in-dividual may pose a threat or needs to be placed on a watch list.

Combining this HR information with an analysis of every time that person en-ters the premises and every door he or she has accessed helps establish an individual’s normal routine. By our nature, humans are creatures of habit, so an individual’s regu-lar behavior pattern can be established

relatively quickly through data analysis. These individual routines can then be

used to develop additional metrics to in-dicate a potential threat. If an employee exhibits not only differentiated behavioral patterns but access patterns as well, those indicators of compromise show that they are a higher risk and as such should be subjected to additional scrutiny.

For those employees who have been flagged in the system, future deviations from their routines, such as coming in to or leaving work at an unusual hour or ac-cessing areas of the building or information systems they’ve never accessed before, will generate additional red flags or even alarms.

When an employee exhibits abnormal behavior relative to their regular routine, it may indicate a possibility of a potential breach. But, these deviations could turn out to be the result of normal or regular access, and the individual may in fact pose no threat to the organization. A supervi-sor may have asked the employee to work different hours or approved their access to a particular area or system that might be required for a particular project he or she is working on.

In these cases, supporting data from one or more systems will likely be avail-able as part of the analysis, and connect-ing those dots will make the activity un-derstandable and remove the employee from suspicion. This underscores the im-portance of collecting and analyzing large amounts of data, since without this con-text provided by predictive analysis, the data would essentially be useless.

One real-world example of the ef-fectiveness of predictive analysis can be found in a company that was experiencing the loss of their equipment over a period of time. At first, the company was unsure who was behind the thefts, but thought it might be the work of an insider. One fac-tor was that the losses were mostly being reported in the morning, which would in-dicate that the thefts were likely occurring after hours.

Based on this initial information, the company began to analyze data to exam-ine employee activity, beginning with iden-tifying any employees who were behaving outside of their normal routine.

They were able to determine those rou-tines using available data that had been

collected from a number of systems. This analysis led them to discover that a par-ticular employee had started to access ar-eas and facilities they had never used pre-viously. They were also able to determine that this access was regularly occurring outside of the employee’s typical hours, often in the late evening.

A final factor was that these abnormal behaviors seemed to correspond with build-ings where the equipment was disappear-ing. From there, the company set an alarm for those types of events. The next time the employee engaged in this new behavior pat-tern, an alarm was triggered. When security staff responded, they caught the employee in the act of disassembling and preparing to steal a piece of equipment.

As illustrated by this example, when properly analyzed, data and information become intelligence. Until now, the amount of available data has often proven too great for an organization to use properly, lead-ing to breakdowns in security processes. Predictive analysis alters this paradigm by pulling the most relevant information out of the virtual ocean of available data in order to develop the intelligence necessary to improve security. Using the intelligence gleaned from analyzing these vast amounts of available data, organizations are able to easily identify patterns, trends and behav-iors that could indicate a potential threat in real time based on irregular behaviors and access patterns.

This actionable intelligence enables organizations to identify potential threats in real time to apply better measures and take proactive action to guard against inci-dents or breaches that data suggests could potentially occur down the road. Unlike alarm-based processes, real-time predic-tive analysis is immune to false alarms, making the process unsusceptible to the human nature that causes people to ignore or respond slowly to alarms. Recognizing a threat when it’s too late and responding reactively is useless for improving security.

Taking advantage of big data, how-ever, predictive analysis transforms secu-rity from a reactive process that involves attempting to investigate in real time into a more proactive and effective process.

Ajay Jain is the president and CEO of Quantum Secure.

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I N T E G R A T E D S Y S T E M S

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ON THE FAST TRACKData has been with man since the dawn of timeBy Brian McIlravey

Today’s integrated systems are generat-ing more data than ever before. For some perspective on just how much data we’re talking about, consider that from the dawn of civilization to 2003, humankind created two exabytes of data. Since 2012, it’s estimated that five exabytes of data are

being generated every single day by internet-connected devices and this number continues to grow. In addition to computers, tablets and smartphones, we’re also surround-ed by a wide variety of other Internet-connected objects including refrigerators that can alert us when we’re almost out of milk or cars that can send an email when windshield washer fluid is low.

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These are just a few examples of the expanding number of objects in our daily lives that are equipped with an IP address and integrated sensors that allow them to communicate. Technologies like GPS and RFID also help to connect these objects in an expanding network known as the Inter-net of Things (IoT).

Security technologies also are part of the IoT and contribute to the amount of data that’s created. A typical VMS, for ex-ample, may record 200 frames per second of surveillance video, while a large, dis-tributed access control system may record thousands of transactions per minute dur-ing certain times of day. This is excellent data to have available, but the challenge is the tremendous quantity of data to be processed. In some ways, the term big data doesn’t come close to describing just how much is out there.

For an incident management system, the key is sifting through all the data produced by these connections and iden-tifying the most relevant information for analysis. However, given the almost in-comprehensible amount of data that’s created every day, that task of identifying, extracting, and analyzing the right data is a tremendous challenge.

In addition to massive data sets, how systems integrate with each other has also changed drastically in recent years. At one time, the paradigm was that one system would connect to another in a linear fash-ion to facilitate a simple data exchange.

Today, these integrations are much more complex and flow in multiple direc-tions simultaneously as systems constantly communicate and share data with each other. This new data model can be termed HV3, which stands for high volume, high velocity, and high variety. All these sys-tems and source points are generating huge numbers of transactions and other data creation events, which are happening very fast on a constant basis. As more and more devices are connected to the internet, those five exabytes of data we currently generate per day will only continue to grow.

It’s important to note that data is not information. Whether big or small, data is simply binary. In order to understand it and make knowledge-based decisions, data needs to be extracted, analyzed and visualized to solve a puzzle. Under the lin-

ear paradigm, data produced by machines and systems would be seen and evaluated by a human, who would draw conclusions based on what they saw and understood within the data. This meant the greatest challenge was to identify and collect rele-vant data for human analysis. What hasn’t changed is security practitioners’ need to proactively analyze information streams to detect, prevent, and solve issues. That is made more difficult with the HV3 model because there is so much data available that it’s no longer possible to process it us-ing traditional methods and applications. Fortunately, there are innovative new tools available that more effectively and effi-ciently extract and analyze incident-relat-ed data and turn it into usable intelligence to help organizations predict vulnerabili-ties to mitigate or eliminate threats.

During the response and recovery phase, an organization collects data about an incident from multiple systems and sources and funnels it into an incident management solution, where it is analyzed for indicators or anomalies that help de-termine why the incident occurred in the first place.

The intelligence gleaned from the data is then shared with departments within an organization, management, and even outside organizations like public safety entities. Using the intelligence generated by data analysis, an organization can then implement protocols, change processes and procedures and educate employees to help prevent similar incidents from occur-ring in the future.

Incident management comprises four steps: plan and prepare, identify and re-spond, document and collaborate, and analyze. For every incident, there are pat-terns and points of reference that precipi-tate the actual event. These may include someone suddenly coming in to work ear-lier and staying later or accessing particu-lar information frequently and for longer than normal periods of time, or may be the seemingly simple act of a door being propped open. Advanced incident man-agement tools bring all that incident-re-lated data that’s been collected from mul-tiple sources and systems together, as the solution reviews the datasets to look for commonalities and identify relationships between occurrences.

Those relationships are not always ob-vious to a human and may not even occur at a single site, but they are discoverable by the algorithms within the software solu-tion. By analyzing data on a global scale, incident management solutions identify specific events, activities and occurrences that have something in common. Those commonalities paint a picture of a poten-tial threat, hazard, or vulnerability. The information is then used to identify pat-terns and anomalies that normally precip-itate an incident, which are instrumental in instituting processes that allow incident management tools to identify a potential occurrence before it occurs, rather than detecting an event as it is happening.

Incident management also automates these tasks, allowing intelligence to be developed much more efficiently and ef-fectively than human analysis. Data is col-lected immediately, creating a record of an event, such as an unauthorized access attempt, that may signal the beginning of the type of pattern that could lead to a threat occurring. If an organization re-lies on human analysis, this type of needle in the haystack might have been missed. With automated software solutions, the software does the work of gathering data from any system or sensor for later use.

For security practitioners, awareness is the main key to incident management and risk mitigation. Despite the sheer amount of data available today, collecting and an-alyzing the relevant information is crucial for managing threats and vulnerabilities, so it’s important to not only understand but embrace the HV3 data model created by the complex integration and data flow among people and the growing number of internet-connected devices and systems.

There is no need to fear the mountain of data. It’s also important to understand that these functions cannot be adequately performed by humans only. Having an ad-vanced incident management system that automates data management and analysis in your security toolbox ensures that raw data is transformed into the actionable intelligence necessary to mitigate and pre-vent incidents from occurring in the first place, ensuring a higher level of safety and security for organizations.

Brian McIlravey is the Co-CEO at PPM.

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N E T W O R K I N G S O L U T I O N S

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Often taken for granted—as video surveil-lance cameras and systems can be found in virtually any public space—the ability to deliver quality live and recorded video is a complex mechanism requiring hardware, software and networking. Because leading

security providers excel in different areas, companies often

join together to create market solutions that are the result of the best each has to offer.

One of the strongest partnerships to emerge in the security industry migration to IP network video surveillance has been Milestone Systems and Razberi Technologies. This team is bring-ing distributed architecture out to the edge while still obtaining visibility in a security operations center that could be just down the street.

ON THE EDGE OF INNOVATIONIP Video Surveillance Market Solutions Building Strong Industry PartnershipsBy Nicole Segura

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They might be a relatively young company at just a few years old, but Carrollton, Texas, based Razberi Technologies has made quite a splash in the security industry with a product that seems amazingly simple. The Razberi ServerSwitch is a network video recorder, a PoE switch, storage and video management software (VMS) in one easy-to-use and easy-to-install appliance. The ServerSwitch has been purpose-built for recording and managing megapixel network video. Its embedded SmartSwitch has been designed to its internal surveillance-grade hard drives. A web in-terface enables remote control of the network switch and mea-surement of PoE consumption and data transmission.

Rather than employing the use of traditionally large and ex-pensive network servers, the VMS runs directly on the Razberi ServerSwitch. This allows system integrators to assemble smaller, more compact systems that don’t require a large IT infrastruc-ture. By combining these functions into one device, the installer saves a tremendous amount of time, and the risk of purchasing a component that can’t support the demands of a megapixel envi-ronment is eliminated.

As Razberi has grown, so has their market. Designed for in-tegrators with little IP expertise, Razberi has found that because they offered plug-and-play capability combined with robust VMS software, they became an attractive cost-saving solution for even the most sophisticated integrator.

Known as the world’s leading provider of open platform IP video surveillance, Milestone’s XProtect VMS is easy to use and provides customers the ability to view live and playback video recordings, investigate suspicious incidents, and export video evi-dence for any-size camera deployment. Headquartered in Den-mark—with American operations in Oregon—Milestone is used by more than 100,000 customers worldwide.

Naturally, Razberi has worked closely with Milestone as they desired to provide integrations with the leading VMS solutions in the security market. But, the partnership has grown and has developed into quite an innovative video surveillance solution.

“Razberi has brought the market the concept of a distributed architecture where they have the server in a distrib-uted environment and closer out to the edge—a practice that has not been done as much with the industry move to centralization,” said Reinier Tuinz-ing, Milestone Systems strategic alli-ance partner manager, Americas. “What is unique—and attractive—is that even though the appliance is closer

to the edge, the unit is visible from anywhere just as it would be in a centralized configuration.”

The Razberi ServerSwitch works seamlessly with the Mile-stone XProtect Corporate VMS to deliver a robust solution that provides easy-to-use, yet powerful, software for controlling video surveillance.

“The Razberi ServerSwitch has improved the delivery of the Milestone VMS product because our customers want to have the storage and processing capability out at the edge,” Tuinzing said. “What we’ve added is the capability to pull that information back to an operation center and make it the entire network.

“What’s really impressive is with the ServerSwitch the complexity is there but it’s hidden by the simplicity of the chassis. We want the depth of the product, but we don’t want to make it complicated.”

Milestone has recognized Razberi Technologies with the Tech-nology Partner Award and in the related article, Q&A: A Sitdown With Razberi Technologies President Tom Galvin, the Server-Switch inventor discusses their partnership with Milestone and the strong foundation they have established for a productive future.

Security Products Q&A: A Sitdown With Razberi Technologies President Tom Galvin

What is the impact of IP networking and how has it impacted your product development?

IP networking has been around a long time, but the fact that the protocols haven’t changed a whole lot in 30 or 40 years is a testament to the simplicity and the foresight these guys had when they put it together. What’s changed is IP networking has become more perva-sive and certainly we’ve seen that in the physical security industry with video surveillance, access control and other products. How we view our job at Raz-

beri is: We didn’t invent IP networking. We didn’t invent mega-pixel cameras. We didn’t invent NVRs. What we have done, how-ever, is we have found ways to combine these things in simplified packages. We view our mission and our value add as taking the complexity of IP networking—particularly for video surveil-lance—and putting that technology into simplified form factors that enable the integrator to do the job at a lower cost.

How have physical security systems evolved in terms of developing ample storage for streaming video?It’s really amazing how storage systems are getting larger, and price points more attractive. The demand for storage is growing exponentially. Look at megapixel cameras: A few years ago, I would have said that the 2-megapixel camera was the sweet spot in our industry and now the quotes that we’re generating are go-ing to 5 megapixel. I don’t know where the 80/20 rule is right now, but the megapixel counts are increasing significantly—increasing storage demands—and that’s creating some unique problems.

We have a very good solution working with the Milestone XProtect VMS. What Razberi can do with our architecture is distribute storage—distribute it on the edge—and that has a number of advantages. One of the advantages is that you don’t have to backhaul all of the video to a central location or server room. What Milestone software allows us to do is store video on the edge, which is more cost effective. The Milestone VMS with the Razberi ServerSwitch solution also allows us to move video into longer-term archive. So, you can move the storage for longer term into that centrally-controlled computer and server room. It’s a very unique architecture. It allows distribution, and it allows redundancy, and the combination of the Razberi with the Milestone VMS is really a unique proposition for the enterprise.

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Because the IP video surveillance world seems to be all about making partnerships, how have you managed your partner-ship with Milestone?Our partnerships are really the key to our success, particularly on the VMS side. Milestone has invested quite a bit into what they call their ecosystem. They promote partnerships through pro-grams, training, and the MIPS (Milestone Integrator Platform Symposium) conference they have annually. We are a proud win-ner of the Milestone Systems Technology Partner Award. Mile-stone does a wonderful job of creating that ecosystem of compli-mentary products. We’ve really embraced that with Razberi. We participate in everything we can—trade shows, co-selling, collat-eral, technology partnerships. We’re all in with the Milestone eco-system and that’s been a boost for both Milestone and Razberi as you look at the project wins we have together.

Because you are constantly improving product development with your own products, how deeply do you work with your part-ners to make sure they are in sync with what you are doing?The partnerships are a real key component of what we do. One of the measures of the level of cooperation are the certifications we do. For example, Milestone has an infrastructure certifica-tion program. Razberi was one of the first products certified by this program. What that involved is a lot of detailed per-formance testing and benchmark testing which we collaborated with in the Milestone labs in Portland. We get very deep in the certifications—that’s a real important part of our business so our customers understand how well the Milestone and Razberi systems work together.

Please explain how the process of implementing your product works with the IP camera and a VMS system?We certify these relationships so that our customers are confident we have a working solution both on the Razberi appliance, and with the VMS, such as Milestone. We extensively test each part-ner’s software on our appliance, and in the case of Milestone, we did so at their lab in Oregon. That gives our integrators confi-dence that we’ve done the benchmarking and that we understand it’s a working solution. We also try to participate in the road maps with our partners—whether it’s with Milestone or a camera ven-dor. We want to understand where they are taking their product, where they are taking their application programming interfaces, so that we maintain those certifications as both the VMS and our hardware advance.

Does that mean that your technical people work with their technical people to make this continue to communicate?Absolutely, and particularly with Milestone, we have a very deep relationship where we are working engineer-to-engineer on a number of projects. Whether it’s system engineers in Portland, or with product development engineers in Copenhagen—we have that tight relationship. It’s really a unique partnership.

Technology in the security industry can be very complex. How are you able to meet the expectation of a superior product, yet keep that product simple for the server, PoE and the workstation?It’s not easy to simplify. These are complex systems we’re dealing with—large storage systems, megapixel video, maintaining certifi-cations—so we put a lot of effort into the simplification process. The only way we can continue to be successful with that is to main-tain the partnerships we have developed. That’s the key to success.

Your security device offers numerous functions, how does it save the installer time?We’ve been surprised—and pleased—not only by the rapid adop-tion of the Razberi and who has adopted the Razberi. Originally, we designed the Razberi appliance with the idea that we would target dealers and installers who didn’t have extensive IP exper-tise. It seemed like a good fit because we could offer the time sav-ings of plug-and-play video and reduce the network complexity. What we’ve been pleasantly surprised by is that some of the most sophisticated integrator partners in our industry have adopted the Razberi. Even though they have CISCO certifications, Mile-stone certifications, Microsoft certifications—despite that high level of expertise—they still see the value of the Razberi appli-ance and how they can simplify the installation and reduce the time of the installation. So, it’s a total cost of ownership savings even for the most sophisticated integrator.

The Razberi appliance was designed to help an integrator make the leap into IP, but now the Razberi product is being embraced by everybody?We are pleased to see that trend. I think it’s a testament to the simplified form factor or the fact that the Razberi embodies the switching element, the network element, and the power element. That really drives cost savings through reducing installation time. These things—simplicity and cost savings—transcend across any integrator and I think that’s why we’ve seen such a growing adop-tion rate, even with the most sophisticated integrators.

Do System Integrators now have the ability to assemble smaller, more compact systems that don’t require a large IT infrastructure?Absolutely. And there are many definitions of enterprise systems. Some of the biggest successes that we’ve had with Milestone, for example, have been individual installations where we may only have four to eight cameras, particularly in the retail sector. But what we see is there may be hundreds or thousands of these indi-vidual four-to-eight camera locations—particularly with a multi-location retailer. That is the power of the combined Milestone and Razberi solution. Razberi offers the simplicity of the infra-structure for a four -to eight- camera system but the Milestone software allows us to integrate thousands of eight-camera sys-tems so that a retailer can have a global view and global manage-ment of thousands of locations. That’s actually where we’ve had quite a bit of success with the Milestone VMS.

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EXIT

NS14 0 2 1 5 | N E T W O R K I N G S E C U R I T Y

COMPLETELY ON LINEWhy they are essential to the networking missionBy Bud Broomhead

The past few years have been unlike any period we’ve experienced in the professional security industry. The jour-ney from the first IP cameras to the

present day is now rapidly accelerating. The Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to make a fundamental change in profes-sional security technology at any mo-ment—a change which is already well underway in the consumer world. Over 4 billion devices are now sending data to the Internet—data which is spun into valuable information. For example, your smart thermostat can detect an unusual drop in outside temperature and raise the heat an hour before you get home from work.

This is true integration between prod-ucts and systems—the fulfillment of a vision once referred to as convergence in the security industry which has become far more relevant today now that big data plays such a critical role in enterprise level security. As we continue to connect more and more things via the network, tech-nologies and devices are finally and truly converging.

Convergence of systems means the sharing of data, a central point for securi-ty since much of the data being generated from these systems, as well as the function-ality driving them, comes from physical security systems like video and access con-trol. In fact, video is a tremendous source of both archived and real-time data. The number of installed IP cameras is grow-ing swiftly, and with megapixel imaging, bandwidth expansion and multi-imager cameras, the quantity of data being pro-

duced is growing geometrically. At any moment, any frame of this data can in-stantly become mission critical for identi-fying individuals, reading anything from a license plate to a serial number on a bill or gaining insight into an incident.

In fact, a moment of recorded video can save executives from a legal action or save a corporation millions of dollars in liability. On the other hand, if the video system fails to record during that criti-cal moment, the loss can be staggering. This is why assuring the video stream is

completing its intended path has become one of IT and security’s biggest chal-lenges. Oversight for this has become the role of what is beginning to be termed a Video Network Administrator (VNA), a position that for the most part does not formally exist, but should. Unlike a team comprising of security technology, systems integrator technicians and IT, these individuals work diligently to keep video surveillance up and running. Now it is time to recognize this position and the person fulfilling it, as the VNA will

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W W W . S E C U R I T Y - T O D A Y . C O M NS15

play a vital role in security strategy, a role which will increase in importance with the continuing expansion and integration of video surveillance technologies.

Successful video infrastructure management requires visibility into the network’s behavior. Each video stream is an amalgam of many different systems and processes, the failure of any one of which can result in missing video. Heterogeneous video networks may include cameras at the edge, complex VMS and other soft-ware, networking infrastructure and hard discs for recording. The more technology that is deployed in a video solution, the more ele-ments there are which could potentially run slow, cut out intermit-tently or fail at any given time. Spot-checking the system will not identify degrading components or other developing problems.

Once a problem is detected, it can be a tremendous challenge for the VNA to identify the cause. Uncertainty about where the root of the problem lies can lead to guesswork and an inefficient trial and error process to try and solve it. Having a number of providers, contractors and vendors for your system exacerbates the problem as they may be reluctant to take responsibility for the issue, which only prolongs video downtime. Informational truck rolls are expensive and use even more time in trying to solve problems. During this time there is a lack of situational aware-ness, video is not being archived, investigations are negatively im-pacted and as a whole the organization is at a higher risk.

Without question, management of the video stream is a seri-ous and complicated issue for risk management, highlighting the crucial nature of the VNA’s role in the organization. This role will only grow in complexity and importance as video surveillance systems become larger and integrate with more hardware and software solutions. It is time not only to recognize the value of the VNA, but also to consider how automation can make them more effective and efficient at their profession.

The rising recognition of these challenges is driving a new segment of growth in the IT industry which has strong applica-

bility within the security industry, as well. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions now exist which can monitor each unique video stream, detect when any interruption or decay is causing a gap in the stream, and alert the VNA with actionable information on how to quickly solve the problem. This software provides almost immediate ROI, but very quietly, as there is no way to measure the problems and liabilities that an organization has avoided by ensuring a robust video stream at all times.

What can be measured, and therefore managed, is diagnos-tic data. SaaS solutions do this, providing key performance in-dicators (KPIs) that give visibility and insight into the behavior of the IP video network and video operations. Furthermore, a well-designed user interface delivers the information directly to mobile phones and tablets in addition to desktop PCs, utilizing data visualization and diagnostic graphing to help the user better understand system statistics. Useful KPIs include:• Videopathuptime• Videostreamdeliveryindex• Videoretentioncompliance• Averageticketresponsetime• Meanfailurerecoverytime

Finally, in the current environment where customer service and support truly defines a brand’s value to their community, it is essential for expert live assistance to be a quick call or click away at all times. This helps to get any questions or issues resolved even more quickly, further raising the ROI.

The individual who is fulfilling the role of VNA in any orga-nization will, with absolute certainty, welcome the adoption of this type of automated software to maintain the health of the video network. For executive management, who are ultimately responsible for any risk that exists in the organization, this is a winning solution.

Bud Broomhead is the CEO of Viakoo.

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