Day: January 16, 2021

Samir Nayak Sr. Sales Director & Country Manager, Everbridge Leading organizations are accelerating their digital transformation to cope with the multitude of disruptions that the pandemic and other critical events are creating. The COVID-19 pandemic is also shining a light on organizations that are succeeding in this environment, having strong business models in conjunction with strengths in adaptability and resilience. As security executives are navigating their organization’s road to recovery and considering a post-pandemic future, there are many lessons to be learned from how the world’s leading organizations are acclimatizing to operating with uncertainty. Not knowing when, or if, the COVID-19 pandemic will end means that changing your approach to security and adapting to better support your business operations is an ongoing endeavor. Many leading organizations are utilizing Everbridge Control Center for mission critical safety and security, and these customers offer valuable lessons for other organizations that are evaluating their security approach. In this white paper we are highlighting their top five security lessons learned that apply across all industries, navigating COVID-19, covering: Boardroom attention and security leadership. Agility, adaptability, and transformation. Automation to reduce risk and enhance compliance. Switch to remote working. Confidence in reopening facilities. 1. Boardroom Attention and Security Leadership The global pandemic is reshaping the business agenda. Many organizations are prioritizing safety and security above all other commercial decisions, forcing security executives into boardroom discussions where business executives are scrutinizing their security operations. Leaders at the forefront of the security industry are seizing their opportunity, by clearly setting out their longer-term investment requirements, rather than focusing on purely tactical initiatives. Ensuring safety and security are receiving the required level of ongoing investment allows their teams to stay ahead of emerging threats and critical events while comprehensively managing everyday organizational risks. They are requesting investment for sustained competitive advantage; articulating the commercial value of security to boardrooms and investing in technologies aimed at driving or enabling revenues and reducing costs over time. We see security executives achieving their objectives by also focusing on reducing risk and increasing operational compliance through digitization and automation. The larger the organization, the more important digitization and automation becomes for increasing behavioral consistency while reducing costs. Strong leadership skills demonstrating a proactive focus on protecting people and business operations have come more naturally to some security executives. Their training and experiences have given them the ability to operate calmly and effectively during life threatening crises. They have taken accountability for collaborating with business colleagues to ensure operational continuity while bolstering their duty of care. They are demonstrating their adaptability in uncertain environments and are at ease managing a growing number of risks. Leading organizations are proactively mitigating risks so that the organization can keep running. They are accelerating effective decision making, not making wrong decisions, having certainty when an incident or critical event is not taking place, and not escalating false incidents. This is where technology is contributing meaningfully, by enabling organizations to make the best-informed decisions through having the right information in the hands of the right people, at the right time. The lesson: Leading security executives are prepared and resilient. They act boldly, especially during uncertainty. They take a long-term view of strategy, yet they can adapt to a changing tactical environment.   2. Agility, Adaptability Innovation & Transformation During the pandemic we are seeing leading organizations adapt with agility in safeguarding people, facilities, and assets wherever they are located. These same organizations are transforming and preparing for growth. The most resilient are not only surviving they are looking to the future with optimism. These organizations may not be the ones you often read about when it comes to innovation and transformation, as they are too busy accomplishing their new plans. Supply chain issues, increasing insider threats, new cyber threats are not dulling leading organization’s ongoing responses. They are operating in a no fail environment and are mobilizing resources to address ambiguity and volatility. The overriding purpose of security innovation and transformation appears to be commercial and organizational success. Leading organizations are expecting their security to be: Commercially valuable, and more cost efficient.  Failsafe in protecting people, facilities, and assets with built-in mobility and digital/ physical convergence. Resilient and adaptable to be future proof. Responding faster through automation and data insights. The lesson: Leading organizations have commercially focused security executives that are using technology, as much as possible, to enable revenues, reduce costs and better protect assets. They are building for future growth. 3. Automation to Reduce Risk and Enhance Compliance While some organizations are advancing the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, many more organizations are digitizing and automating standard operating procedures to provide comprehensive operational control and increase workforce productivity. We see customers digitizing and automating compliance, resulting in better: Management of (multiple) critical events. Safety and security. Protection of people, facilities, and assets. Operational resilience. Mitigation of business disruptions. Response, adaption, recovery, and learning from incidents Speed of response is one positive outcome of automation, directly affecting life safety or security. Using technology to automate alerts, decisions, actions, and reporting is clearly beneficial when the volume of information flooding into the organization is significant. Waiting for an operator to notice ‘something’ before acting is an avoidable risk. Without automation you are also relying on your operators to know your assets from memory (e.g., finding the nearest camera to where an incident is happening) or losing precious time through switching between applications and lookup lists. That is assuming that your operators are trained sufficiently that they remember the exact process your organization has prescribed for the exact situation, and that they can remember that process during a potential crisis moment. Beyond automation, our customers are using orchestration for dynamic workflows. They are not operating with data silos or fragmented operating pictures. Dynamic workflows defining how the system is going to react if ‘this and this happens’ or if ‘this and this but not that happens’ ensures that the system performs in the way the organization has…

Challenge The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our way of life, at both a professional and personal level. As new information emerges about businesses reopening and restrictions lifting to give way to a new definition of normalcy, there remains public and health safety guidelines to curb the spread. This challenge could not be more top of mind for organizations, both public and private, in how they open up their operations while keeping their employees and customers safe. It has been established that social distancing plays a pivotal role in limiting the spread of COVID-19. Organizations such as retail stores and business offices need a way to limit occupancy rates in their facilities at any given time in order to support effective social distancing measures. Solution Motorola Solutions is committed to innovating mission-critical technologies to protect people and communities. In the face of this global pandemic, Motorola Solutions is currently investigating different solutions, including looking at the analytics and software technology we have in the market that can be leveraged to help organizations effectively protect their employees and customers. Motorola Solutions’ Occupancy Counting feature in Avigilon Control Center (ACC) 7, the latest release of our video management software, can provide organizations an easy and streamlined way to count and identify the number of people in a facility. The feature aims to remove the staffing costs required to count people manually and the subsequent guess work on occupancy by frontline employees, particularly where facilities have multiple entry and exit points. Occupancy Counting helps organizations comply with social distancing guidelines by limiting the number of people in a facility, thereby reducing the interactions between them. Occupancy Counting leverages Avigilon’s analytic-enabled cameras that feature advanced object detection, including enhanced detection of people, which is particularly suitable for facility entrances or exits. To deploy the Occupancy Counting feature, Avigilon H5A or H4A cameras or third-party cameras connected to an Avigilon artificial intelligence appliance, can be specially placed at the entry and exit points of a facility or area to monitor traffic. AI-powered video analytics detect and classify a person crossing the entry or exit point and automatically translates these analytic events into entry and exit events. These events will be visible through dashboards in Avigilon Cloud Services (ACS) for managers to determine how many people are inside a facility, or alternatively, for automated screens to display at store fronts. Cloud-based reporting and visualizations provide helpful insights into hot spots and high traffic entry or exit points, allowing facilities to implement corrective measures to manage occupancy rates. For example, a retail store has been directed by its local government to reinforce social distancing measures by limiting the number of people in its store to 50% of its typical capacity. The retail store installs H5A cameras at its entrance to leverage the Occupancy Counting feature. As customers enter or exit the store, they are counted and compared to the occupancy threshold set in the ACS dashboard by store management. The front door display shows the current occupancy and when it is exceeded, displays a red screen that lets employees and customers know that they have to wait until people inside exit before they may enter. The ACS dashboard gives managers both a real-time and historical view of the occupancy of their facility and delivers further insights on typical peak times, the number of times per day customers must wait to enter, and finally, informs measures to optimize outdoor queuing support (e.g., sidewalk markers or crowd control barriers). The retail store is one out of many locations of a national chain. The security team of the retail chain has connected all of its stores that use ACC software to ACS, enabling them to use the Occupancy Counting feature across multiple stores from a central location, and determine if there are any trends that regional or national management should be aware of. In an office building setting, occupancy counting can display the number of people inside a facility based on strategically placed cameras installed at entry and exit points of the facility. The net total occupancy is displayed on a dashboard in ACS and can also be publicly displayed on a tablet placed at entry or exit points to manage traffic. Based on a set occupancy limit being reached or not, the tablet can be triggered to display instructions to permit entry or wait. The ACS dashboard can be used by management to provide insight on how many of their employees are returning to work in the office, allowing them to determine if additional guidelines like social distancing or face mask attire need to be reinforced. If occupancy limits are consistently exceeded, managers can also implement corrective measures such as requiring more employees to work from home. Organizations can pair the Occupancy Counting feature with Avigilon’s social distancing technology for a more powerful solution. Avigilon’s social distancing technology is powered by video analytics to automatically calculate the distance between individuals in the H5A cameras’ field of view. Managers can continuously monitor social distancing efforts within a facility, run reports of when social distancing violations occur and identify high traffic zones requiring additional attention or corrective action. As our world slowly reopens, it is imperative for organizations to follow public and health safety guidelines including social distancing and avoiding large gatherings. Innovative video security and AI-powered video analytics technology can deliver the intelligent capabilities that organizations need to protect people and create a new way of operating, especially when there is no timeline on when COVID-19 will recede as a global health crisis. In these uncertain times, a layered approach is the best strategy. Combining solutions for occupancy counting with technologies for social distancing, face mask detection and thermal screening efforts are essential for a depth in defense approach to limit the spread of COVID-19.