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Asis SecurityLink India

Refreshed Protection of Assets (PoA) Reference Set Offers Timely Recommendations for Security Best Practice

To keep pace with the ever-evolving security industry, ASIS International released an update to the Protection of Assets (PoA) reference set. Refreshed to reflect the changing times and keep security professionals on the leading edge of best practices in the field, this collection is to assist security management directors and professionals responsible for corporate asset protection. This refreshed reference set, which was first published in 1974, constitutes recommended reading for all four of ASIS’s certifications. Teams of subject matter experts across the security continuum volunteered to write, edit, and update the PoA – including Tim Sutton, CPP, senior security consultant, Guidepost Solutions. “Since its first iteration, the PoA is and has been the ultimate reference for the security profession,” says Sutton, “I have used the PoA as an encyclopedia for security, referencing it for countless projects across all industry verticals – including healthcare, commercial real estate, education, manufacturing, and cannabis. The latest version addresses modern challenges and practices, making it now more than ever the go-to reference for the security industry.” Available individually or as a bundle, the PoA includes vital learning on the following aspects of asset protection: Business principles – including the fundamentals of security business operations, management, and leadership. Crisis management – including emergency management, business continuity, and crisis communications. Personnel – including security officer operations, employee drug testing, executive protection, and spotting problem behavior. Physical security – including design principles and practices, tools and techniques to satisfy protection objectives, and practical project management guidance. Investigations – including interviews and interrogations, undercover investigations, due diligence, preemployment background screening, evidence collection, and expert testimony. Security management – including theft and fraud prevention, security standards, loss reporting, methods, and enterprise security risk management (ESRM).  

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Lack of Transparency over Vaccine Trials, Secretive Contracts and ‘Science by Press Release’ Risk Success of Global Covid-19 Response

A lack of transparency in COVID-19 vaccine trials and secrecy over deals between governments and drug companies risks the success of the global pandemic response, new research from Transparency International Global Health and the University of Toronto warns. For Whose Benefit? is an indepth study of the development and sale of the world’s top 20 COVID-19 vaccines, including those developed by AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer/ BioNTech. Through detailed analysis of clinical trial data and nearly 200 contracts for vaccine sales up to March 2021, the report reveals a pattern of poor transparency and a disturbing trend of governments censoring key details of their orders from drug companies. Clinical trial transparency is the only way to monitor the safety and efficacy of vaccines and is a key safeguard against selective reporting of results or manipulation of data. Despite this, analysis of the registered clinical trials for the top vaccines reveals that results from just 45 per cent of these trials had been announced. Of this figure, 41 per cent had provided only top-level results via a press release or press conference, with the full data not made available for media scrutiny or academic review. Clinical trial protocols had been published for just 12 per cent of trials. There were no publicly accessible protocols for 88 per cent of the registered trials in our analysis and, therefore, no way of knowing the conditions under which they were carried out. Jonathan Cushing, Head of Transparency International’s Global Health Programme, said, “These results make for worrying reading and carry important implications not just for the COVID-19 response, but also for future health emergencies. The lack of transparency of many clinical trials combined with the huge financial incentives for producing effective treatments leaves the door wide open for selective reporting of results or outright data manipulation. The lack of publicly accessible data creates space for misleading and potentially dangerous half-truths, disinformation, and conspiracy the ories, which in turn contribute to vaccine hesitancy.” The research also highlights poor transparency in contracts between drug companies and governments. Of the handful of contracts that had been published, almost all include significant redactions of key information such as total price paid, price per dose and delivery schedules. Analysis of 183 contracts for 12 different COVID-19 vaccines reveals that only 7 per cent of vaccine contracts between developers and governments were published through official channels. Just one contract (0.5 per cent) was published without redactions. Most feature entire pages of redactions which obscure information of critical public interest. There are large disparities in the price paid. For the Oxford/ AstraZeneca-developed vaccine, upper-middle income economies like South Africa are paying an average of 25 per cent more per dose than high-income economies like the European Union. “Equally as disturbing is the lack of transparency over the contracts between governments and vaccine developers,” Cushing said, “Hiding contracts from public view or publishing documents filled with redacted text means we don’t know what governments have signed up to. Given the huge amounts of public money invested in research and development around the world, citizens have the right to know everything about the vaccines their taxes helped to fund.” With recent polling showing that one third of the world’s population – 1.3 billion people – are unwilling to take a coronavirus vaccine, transparency is vital to build confidence. Transparency International Global Health calls on: National governments to adopt and enforce legislation requiring the pre-registration of all clinical trials and the publication of summary results within 12 months of their completion. All governments that have bought vaccines should also follow the lead of the United States and publish their contracts. Vaccine developers to publish their clinical trial protocols on a publicly accessible registry (if they have not done so already). Developers should also only use media to announce clinical trial results in tandem with data analysis published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, trial registry or as a pre-print article.  

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Prama Hikvision’s Smart Healthcare Solutions with AI Empowered End-to-End Thermal Screening Ensures Security

Healthcare facilities like hospitals, special healthcare centers and clinics have myriad of specialized protection requirements. What’s more, they require security, safety and hygienic environment for the patients, doctors, nurses and paramedical staff. Hospital and healthcare authorities should consider a smart healthcare solution to address various security, safety and hygiene challenges effectively. Specific requirements Hospitals and health care facilities are designed to be places of healing, recovery, and tranquillity. However, with high volumes of people constantly coming and going – visitors, volunteers, patients, and others – maintaining smooth operations and responding quickly to emergency events are becoming more challenging. Furthermore, recording the activities of hospital personnel, securing limited access areas, and keeping parking lots operating efficiently require intelligent technology. Some of the most common requirements for a hospital solution might include, ensuring around-the-clock safety for patients and staffs, quickly evaluating incidents for prompt event response, effectively managing access control and attendance for critical and restricted areas and centralizing operations for all the various systems. Smart healthcare solution Prama Hikvision’s Solution for healthcare facilities helps answer to all of these concerns and more with its advanced technology, powerful cameras, and reliable recording devices. Everywhere from guard stations to intensive care units, Hikvision products powerfully assist and protect healthcare facilities and personnel, making both security and management for hospitals easier and more intelligent. Temperature screening and face mask wearing alert thermographic cameras, temperature measurement walk-through detector and MinMoe face recognition terminal with temperature screening and face mask wearing alert, are helpful to manage large number of hospital staff, visitors, patients and doctors. Hikvision temperature screening solution, with multiple product types and wide range of applications, is designed for the detection of skin-surface temperatures so as to achieve rapid and safe preliminary screening in public areas with high efficiency in a multitude of scenarios. These include thermographic cameras, MinMoe terminals, metal detector door, DeepinMind NVRs and smart onboard terminals. A complete hospital solution requires the synergy of a number of systems – video security, panic alarm, and access control systems, to name a few. Hikvision offers advanced and comprehensive solutions that fluidly integrate all the moving parts, making setup and daily operations much easier for unique conditions. The solutions include following activities and requirements – reception to patient calling, internal calling system, doctor monitoring, paging in clinic, 2nd generation IP video intercom solution, IP VDP intercom clinic kit and analog video intercom solution. Prama Hikvision’s smart healthcare security solution covers nurse station to patient areas and other critical parts of the hospital. Command and control room I t offers powerful and unified security management to ensure quick response to alarms with advanced alarm management function. It effectively helps to manage access control systems including assigning permissions, managing user groups, and more. It also offers an intuitive dashboard showing the status of devices. It further helps to set up automatic health inspections and receive notifications of errors. Parking lots The parking solution helps efficient vehicle access management by reducing the labor costs with automatic vehicle entry by ANPR camera. It helps to manage the vehicle flow and entry/ exit records efficiently. It enables comprehensive monitoring for the entire parking lot with clear video both day and night. Entrance monitoring I t helps clear monitoring at all time by capturing sharp imaging at entrances even in high contrast conditions with WDR cameras. It uses people counting technology to record numbers of visitors for capacity control and optimized security. Lobbies and nurse stations I t helps enabling emergency response to sudden events. The solution helps detect and respond quickly to events such as a patient falling, with intelligent cameras. It helps efficiently display hospital floor map or health-related public announcement with digital signage, clearly record all works and interactions at reception or nurse stations. Pharmacies All-around protection with multiple systems helps keep pharmacies safe and secure. Strict and controlled access with face recognition terminals to ensure that only authorized persons can enter the premises. The solution keeps video log of all entry and exit records of the visitors. It monitors the indoor temperature and send alarm notifications if any temperature anomaly is found. Doctor’s offices The solution has compact video security cameras for routine monitoring. They record the daily work of doctors in case any medical arbitration is required. These cameras monitor offices during offhours to ensure the safety of all information such as patients’ clinical records or other medical information. Patient areas Thoughtful and efficient care is ensured by the CCTV monitoring of patient areas. The patients are provided a panic button to call for help in case of emergency. They can communicate easily with audio intercom (public broadcasting also available) Corridors Effective monitoring of all areas enhances healthcare security. It offers full view of the corridor without losing any detail with the specially-designed corridor monitoring mode (3:4 frame ratio). It helps utilize intelligent cameras to monitor sudden events, enabling quick responses. These solutions are available in two categories of healthcare facilities – hospital solutions and clinic solutions. Safety and hygiene through Prama Hikvision intercom (VDP) solution This solution can be used for doctor to patient as an intercom (VDP) solution. Further, it can be used for reception desk for patients. It can be used to effectively communicate between nurse, doctor and patient in the hospital. DS-KD9613 is FRS unit, which is having face+biometric+card access. Visitors either call to reception or patient room. After the visiting hours visitors can contact patients. It can help maintain social distance in hospitals and health centres. Doctors, nurses and other regular paramedical staff of the hospital can directly use facial recognition terminals for their touch free entry and attendance in the hospital. EZVIZ solutions for healthcare EZVIZ camera can be installed in the isolation ward of each patient using Wi-Fi, then to install EZVIZ app on the doctor/ hospital mobile/ laptop, and to add all cameras on the app with name of the cameras as patient name/ id. One can monitor patient remotely from anywhere whenever possible using mobile…

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