Violent crime may be declining in South Africa, according to the latest SAPS statistics, but that is not the case with commercial and business crime. The result is that asset tracking continues to be a service demanded by many companies as they attempt to keep vehicles, parcels and equipment safe.
Unfortunately, asset protection has always told us where an asset is - or was. The sad reality is that knowing where something was stolen most often does not get it back. It certainly does nothing to stop the crime in the first place.
IOTI’s view is that traditional asset protection developed as a stopgap response to South Africa’s exploding crime problem of the 1990s. As a result, almost all current solutions are not effective enough to find an asset once it is gone, or to render it useless to criminals.
To properly prevent loss, companies need the following:
Early warning: The ability to be notified instantly when a parcel, a roller cage, or even something as small as a file is moved or tampered with.
Traceability: Knowing not just the location, but the entire chain of custody—loading, unloading, storage conditions, and handling.
Intelligence: Recording parameters such as temperature, humidity, and impact on the asset, so that the full story of what happened is clear.
When it comes to the above, perhaps the biggest challenge lies in the fact that no technology in the world today is immune to jamming, blocking, or detection. Criminals are sophisticated, and most of us have realised from traditional news sources and social media that the use of jamming devices to disable conventional security and tracking systems is widespread.
Fortunately, opportunity lies in the fact that while jamming can never be eliminated, its impact can be mitigated through clever design. If there was nothing to jam, there would be nothing to scan and no obvious signal to interfere with.
This is the approach IOTI has taken. With our edge processing strategy, we have developed smart electronics with edge processing capabilities. Instead of relying on constant signals that criminals can easily detect, our devices think for themselves. They monitor conditions locally, make decisions at the edge, and only transmit when necessary.
This technology is designed to be undetectable, hard to jam, and capable of turning even the smallest tagged item into a source of intelligence.
This means South African businesses can now benefit from tracking solutions that are affordable enough to be applied to even the smallest items. At the same time, instant alerts are emitted when assets are moved. Combine this with complete event logs of loading, unloading, and handling conditions, coupled with the fact that assets are now both traceable and tamper-evident.
Some implications of this include:
• A logistics company knows immediately if a parcel has been removed from its cage.
• A retailer can monitor not just the movement of goods, but also their condition—temperature, humidity, impact—from warehouse to shelf.
• A bank or government office can secure files or sensitive equipment in a way that makes them unstealable, because once removed, they can be traced back to the source.
• A fleet operator can use E-Seals and asset-level monitoring to cut inspection times, improve security, and protect high-value items, even in transit.
Edge processing is the best way to know if a breach has occurred, while also providing the tools to recover what was taken.
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