Habitual awareness
August 2018, News
Habits are very good things that allow us to carry out the many repetitive tasks we do every day. Our brains automatically form habits to make these repetitive tasks easier and allow us to do them ‘without thinking’. Of course, there is always the risk that our unthinking habits can lead to problems, like when we are distracted when reversing the car and scratch the paintwork.
Many people create habits in the security realm as well, such as the ‘muscle memory’ police officers use to be able to draw their weapon in an instant without thinking. When officers draw their weapons, they are focused on the situation at hand and have no time to think about their gun, they need it to be in their hand while they focus on de-escalating the situation (or getting out of the way of bullets).
Unfortunately for civilians, we are also in the habit of forming habits when it comes to security. We live in an estate so we switch off our brains because security is someone else’s problem. This would be a nice way to live, but we don’t live in a country, or continent, or even a world where this is a reasonable course of action (perhaps it is in some parts of Europe, but definitely not here).
The prevalence of false alarms is one of the most annoying and dangerous aspects of security in every field or industry. When an alarm goes off we want it to mean that something is wrong and actions need to be taken. In the residential market, most of the alarms are false. We all know that person who is just incapable of remembering to disarm the alarm when they come in or go out.
The result is a habit of saying a few rude words and automatically resetting the alarm because the idiot forgot, again. But this is where the danger comes in. One day it may not be the idiot doing it and we will find ourselves in trouble – the criminals know this and purposely create false alarms to lower our sense of awareness and vigilance. They only have to succeed once; you have to be secure every time, all the time.
It is therefore important to create the vigilance habit and react accordingly, even for false alarms. It is more important for security professionals to do what they can in terms of technology and visual verification to avoid false alarms and the complacency that so easily creeps in when you are inundated with false alarms.
As is our habit, Hi-Tech Security Solutions produces the Residential Estate Security Handbook once every year and this year is no exception. And while we have much information about technology, the handbook also contains some insights into what goes before the technology – managing your risk. Just slapping a few cameras and access control readers down is an expensive way to support your local installer. You need a strategic plan and you need to be able to measure your security against that plan from day one to year five (or more).
We have also included some information on home security, for those not in the habit of leaving their personal security to others. Home security today does not mean creating your own prison, technology can make it almost invisible, yet effective and easily manageable.
Each year, the handbook is based on feedback from the previous year, so please feel free to send your thoughts, comments and criticisms to andrew@technews.co.za. We’d like the Residential Estate Security Handbook to become habit forming for our readers.
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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