It can be secure or it can be cheap
September 2017, News
Kicking off the Residential Estate Security Conference 2017, Rob Anderson noted an unpleasant truth about estates and their endeavour to be secure. Rob noted that estates ask for advice, request quotes to meet their specific requirements, and then choose the cheapest quote. Alternatively, someone on the HoA or body corporate knows someone “who is brilliant at this type of stuff” and the job goes to them.
Not too long after the installation is complete, the complaints start coming in about perimeter breaches, illegal and undocumented access, cameras that produce yellow (or sometimes green) images when they are working, and guards that are never where they are supposed to be (except when they’re asleep). Of course this applies to more markets than only estates, but it is an inconvenient truth many integrators, consultants, service providers and vendors deal with on a regular basis.
Even if you get someone to install the cheap stuff professionally, they won the bid on price and you will be disappointed if you think they are going to support and maintain their work just as professionally – no matter what was agreed. The budget cuts have to come from somewhere and it’s either saved during installation or in the support/maintenance phases (or both). We all know the economy is in the dumpster, but is that worth the risks involved in bad security?
Perhaps the problem is that the people making decisions are not aware of what makes security work. Those nasty bean counters simply count beans, not the cost of lives and the trauma involved in failed security. But there again, see what cars they drive and ask them why they aren’t in a 1973 VW Beetle – that’s a cost-effective buy?
Cost of ownership was one of the presentations at this year’s Residential Estate Security Conference. You can find a brief summary of it and the other presentations in this handbook. We also have an article on the total cost of ownership as it pertains to the security market among the different editorials we include in the publication.
We also have insights from some people involved in ensuring their estate’s security who sat around a table with Hi-Tech Security Solutions to speak about the challenges they face. Money is always an issue, but it doesn’t have to mean poor security.
I would like to thank everyone who supplied information and answered questions in the process of putting the Residential Estate Security Handbook 2017 together. It’s difficult to compress everything into one publication, but with the able assistance of Rob Anderson we have managed to address many of the security issues estates today are facing.
I hope you enjoy the magazine and I welcome comments, suggestions and criticisms to andrew@technews.co.za
Andrew Seldon
Editor
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Further reading:
- From the editor’s desk: Converging access control
November 2018, Technews Publishing, News
Welcome to the Access & Identity Management Handbook 2019. Were publishing this in January as opposed to our traditional end-of-year publishing schedule to make sure you have some bed-time reading for ...
- Trust but continually verify
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions, IT infrastructure
Hi-Tech Security Solutions looks at access and identity management and asks some industry players what ‘zero trust’ and ‘least privilege’ access means.
- Managing who, what and why
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Cyber Security
Today’s access control isn’t only concerned with who has access, but also what has access, why they need it and what they are doing with it.
- Physical/logical convergence
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Cyber Security, Integrated Solutions, IT infrastructure
The convergence between physical and logical (or cyber) security will be a game-changer because it will change the way we do everything, from planning to design and all the way to installation and maintenance.
- The expanding role of IT in access control
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Access Control & Identity Management, IT infrastructure
What role is IT playing in the world of physical access control and how far will its role expand in future?
- Taking augmented identity to the world
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions
Hi-Tech Security Solutions spoke to Gary Jones, VP Global Channel and Marketing biometric access and time solutions) at IDEMIA (formerly Morpho) about his career with the company and its new vision of Augmented Identity.
- A scan of fingerprint biometrics
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management
Given the increase in the use of fingerprint technology in public and private organisations, as well as some recent announcements on the reliability or lack or reliability of certain types of sensors and algorithms in the fingerprint biometric market, Hi-Tech Security Solutions spoke to some of the leading fingerprint biometric vendors in the market to find out more about the state of this market.
- BIMS set to change identity management
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions, IT infrastructure
Local biometrics integrator, Ideco Biometric Security Solutions, has announced that its Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) has been launched to market.
- Your face tells a story
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, CCTV, Surveillance & Remote Monitoring, Government and Parastatal (Industry)
Facial recognition has advanced to the point where it can be rolled out over large areas and accuracy is no longer a hit-and-miss affair.
- The right access decisions
November 2018, Technews Publishing, This Week's Editor's Pick, Access Control & Identity Management
Making the right access control decision depends on what you want secured and how secure it should be.
- IP is no stranger to access control
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions, IT infrastructure
Just as the surveillance market made the move to IP-based communications, the access control market is also moving to IP (or some say it already has).
- Applying the SaaS model to access control
November 2018, Technews Publishing, Access Control & Identity Management, Integrated Solutions
The software-as-a-service model has proven transformative to many organisations, and even entire industries. The benefits it can offer are undeniable, but in the security sector which is risk-averse by necessity, we wanted to hear the views of some local experts in access control as a service (ACaaS) to find out what some of the pros and cons are.
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