Day: April 16, 2019

Vanderbilt has recently announced a new strategic partnership with its sister company ComNet to offer customers an improved level of service. The new partnership creates a collaboration between ComNet Europe and sister company Vanderbilt International, and primarily includes leveraging internal systems and supply chain and logistics structures. This new relationship is effective immediately. A significant enhancement resulting from this partnership is that ComNet now has a fully functional, pan-European technical support team in place to support customers across the globe. ComNet’s continued growth “ The changes build from ComNet’s continued growth over the past year,” said Tom Exley, General Manager of ComNet Europe, “This format is designed to help ComNet customers get technical support faster and more efficiently. This is because, at ComNet, we are determined to put our customers first, in everything we do.” This integration means ComNet customers will have greater access to a higher number of technical support agents including local support in core languages. Meaning geographical hubs can operate more effectively and ensure resolutions for any technical issues as quickly as possible. “We are committed to building ComNet into a support network of excellence. It’s important to look ahead to identify future opportunities that will benefit our customers. This enhancement ensures we can deliver a customer service experience that is second to none,” added Exley. Increasing the scope Crucially, up until this point, ComNet’s technical support team was reinforced primarily by the company’s Sales managers. Therefore, this collaboration of technical support with Vanderbilt will free up ComNet Sales to focus solely on bringing the best products, services and offers to their clientele. So, this new partnership enables ComNet to increase their scope of offerings such as pre, pending and post-Sales support, plus the ability to design and implement complete high-performance solutions to answer customer pain points. “We believe this opportunity will significantly improve our support services model and enable our geographical hubs to operate more effectively. This will result in a more efficient cycle of how we manage and maintain our rapidly expanding customer base,” concluded Exley. ComNet offers an extensive line of fiber optic, copper and wireless video and data transmission equipment that is uniquely designed to meet the needs of the security, intelligent transportation system, utility and industrial markets. Vanderbilt is a global provider of security systems recognized for future-proof, high-performance, and easy-to-use products across access control and intrusion detection. Vanderbilt strives for innovation in Software-as-a-Service solutions such as ACT365 and SPC Connect, as well as product integration both within and outside of their portfolio offerings. An advocate of open platforms and integrations, Vanderbilt solutions are designed to meet and solve customer pain points.

Finnish cybersecurity company F-Secure continues to receive market recognition for their solutions, with the current win being a first for the company. The latest accolade is the Professional User Rating: Security Solutions 2019 (PUR-S) Champion Award given for Radar by German research and analyst firm Techconsult. F-Secure Radar is a PCI ASV certified, turnkey vulnerability scanning and management platform. It allows users to efficiently identify, evaluate, and prioritize vulnerabilities and security risks, even beyond their organization’s own network assets. Unpatched and badly configured software is a key attack vector and breach enabler, especially when it comes to more advanced attacks. F-Secure Radar can significantly lower the cost of an organization’s vulnerability management process by automatically and proactively identifying vulnerabilities, and prioritizing them based on business risk. F-Secure’s Teemu Myllykangas, Radar Solution Director explained that prioritization of vulnerabilities should be done based on true business risk rather than the perceived severity of the vulnerability. “For example, even a severe vulnerability doesn’t necessarily rise very high in remediation priority when it’s on a laptop that you do not particularly care about. However, a mediocre vulnerability on an internet-facing business-critical server will certainly be one of the top priorities. We help in prioritizing the vulnerabilities by providing the needed business risk context,” he said. Vulnerability Management (VM) is the process of identifying, evaluating, reporting, and remediating security vulnerabilities in business processes, web applications, and systems as well as the software that runs on them; however, this is not the entire attack surface. “Unlike F-Secure Radar, most VM solutions do not look Radar wins Techconsult Vulnerability Management Award beyond your own network. Often, elements of old services remain online, even after the service is shut down. They are forgotten and unmaintained, and thus are vulnerable. For an attacker studying your attack surface, however, they provide an easy-toexploit beachhead to your network,” explained Myllykangas. F-Secure Radar leverages the Finnish cyber security company’s trademark combination of human expertise and AI excellence. The expertise and real-world experience gained from F-Secure’s penetration testers and red teaming exercises fuel the development of the solution, providing award-winning value for its users. Techconsult conducted a large-scale user study on IT security products for 6 solution areas, with 14 categories and more than 60 individual criteria. The evaluation, which involved more than 2,000 user companies completing an online survey, involved ratings regarding company, and technology/ solution rating. Around 160 manufacturers offering IT security solutions on the German-speaking market were in focus. Marco Becker, IT Market Analyst at Techconsult commented, “With its vulnerability management solution F-Secure Radar, F-Secure achieved fifth place and thus a top position in the broadly diversified field of competition.” “F-Secure was particularly convincing in the concrete solution evaluation, which even achieved a place on the winner’s rostrum in several categories. In concrete terms, this means that F-Secure has the second-best rating for solution utility and manufacturer loyalty, and the third-best for user-friendliness and product loyalty,” he added. The latest award given to F-Secure comes on the heels of two from AV-TEST for F-Secure Protection Service for Business Computer Protection and the consumer-oriented F-Secure SAFE.

IDIS Europe has reported record sales growth for 2018, with a 78% rise attributed to successful projects with long term partners and continued investment in technology and support services. Contributing to this success the company, which is one of Korea’s largest in-country video surveillance manufacturers, was the supplier for major contract wins in the retail, eating-out, healthcare and education sectors. Since opening its European headquarters in Brentford, London in 2013, IDIS has established a strong technical support team and wide sales networks, and the company has worked hard to develop profitable partnerships with both installers, integrators and distributors. “Our core strategy as a company is to pursue sustainable growth alongside our partners, as a one-stop supplier for video solutions. This means working together to ensure customer satisfaction, delivering better value and better technology,” said James Min, Managing Director, IDIS Europe. For installers and integrators, IDIS is now focusing on reducing TCS (total cost to serve), giving them complete, easy-to-source video solutions that offer more profitable implementations and predictable revenue streams. “Going forward this is a priority, and it will be achieved by continuing to invest in video technology that eliminates complexity and earns the loyalty of end-users,” said James Min, “The most encouraging thing is that whenever customers switch to IDIS technology, it is giving them higher performance and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). They also know that we are working on new forward and backwards compatible technology to meet their future requirements.” For the integrator, IDIS’ model of simple-to-install technology means more realistic and attractive maintenance and service agreements. True plug-and-play performance was developed to reduce complexity for engineers installing and maintaining systems and in turn reduce cost and disruption for end users.  

GJD has recently been named ‘Outstanding Security Equipment Manufacturer’ at the Outstanding Security Performance 2019 Awards (OSPAs). The competition for this category was extremely competitive, making it a great achievement for GJD. The awards dinner and presentation took place at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in central London. The OSPAs recognise and reward companies and individuals across the security sector. The OSPAs are designed to be both independent and inclusive, providing an opportunity for outstanding performers, whether buyers or suppliers, to be recognised and their success to be celebrated. Ana Maria Sagra-Smith, GJD’s Sales and Marketing Director commented, “It is a great honour for GJD to be recognised as an Outstanding Security Equipment Manufacturer at this year’s OSPAs. The award is testament to GJD’s strong focus on creating innovative product technology for the security sector.” I would like to take this opportunity to thank the GJD team for their commitment to deliver world-class security solutions to our loyal customer base.” OSPAs founder Professor Martin Gill commented, “The OSPAs provide an independent platform to showcase excellence and outstanding performance across the sector ensuring that those who contribute to maintaining high standards are recognised and rewarded.” He continued, “Each year the calibre of the nominations exceeds expectations and makes the job of selecting the winners particularly challenging for the judging panel. All those that were selected as finalists and winners demonstrated that they really are the very best and should feel extremely proud.”  

Crossing one milestone after another, CP PLUS, the leading player of the surveillance industry in India, furthered its international presence with chain of exclusive store launches across the historic country of Egypt. Extending its territorial influence, CP PLUS launched its stores in – Alexandria, Port Said, Mansoura, Cairo, Zagazg, Minya, Sohag, Qena, and Aswan – making its surveillance products and solutions available throughout the nine exclusive stores for Egyptian customers. A grand launch was organized across each of the CP PLUS store with a ceremonial cake cutting by the members of the CP PLUS team. Commenting on the Egypt debut, Aditya Khemka, MD – CP PLUS said, “We were looking forward to this launch, and opening of the CP PLUS exclusive stores in Egypt is one of the proudest moments for us. It is exciting to expand our reach and see ourselves visible on this part of the world. Egypt should prove a favorable market for us since the on-going development and infrastructural advancements will be beneficial for the business to penetrate deeper. Also, this location will provide us with an opportunity to eye the neighboring locations of the middle eastern continent. We want to work towards making the security and surveillance domain a prominent and flourishing sector here, and target more and more customers to gain business mileage.” During the store launches, team CP PLUS displayed specific security solutions such as T&A solutions, VDP solution, intelligent network solution, artificial intelligence based solution and HD surveillance solution, among others. The CP PLUS stores in Egypt will house wide range of products starting from network cameras, NVR solutions, analog HD cameras, PTZ cameras, digital video recorders, biometric solutions, vdp solutions, accessories and more. The surveillance industry in Egypt is going through a transitional phase and the country’s infrastructural development is rapidly evolving towards a brighter future. With the store launches, now the CP PLUS team will add another dimension to its   international market reach. In addition, with this CP PLUS is foraying into understanding the customer sentiments and plans to work relentlessly in fulfilling consumer expectations in the Mid-East nation.