September 2, 2021 - securitylinkindia

Case Study

Seagate Technology Chooses Genetec to Secure its Global Campuses

MassMediaLink India LLP SecurityLink IndiaSeptember 2, 2021November 14, 202403 mins

Genetec Inc., a leading technology provider of unified security, public safety, operations, and business intelligence solutions, recently announced that Seagate Technology Holdings plc., a leading world provider in data storage and enterprise storage systems, has deployed Genetec™ Security Center to secure their global campuses and regional offices. At the heart of this large-scale global deployment is the Genetec unified security platform which includes Security Center, Genetec Omnicast™ IP video management system (VMS) to manage more than 1,150 cameras, Genetec Synergis™ IP access control system (ACS) to manage more than 22,000 card holders, Sipelia to manage communications between intercoms and security operation, and Seagate’s own high-efficiency, high-performance Exos™ X 5U84 mass capacity storage system. All sites are connected using the Genetec Security Center Federation feature to centralize monitoring, reporting, and alarm management across the entire organization. The solution enables Seagate to pull in up to 1.3 petabytes of high-definition video in a single disk enclosure from hundreds of cameras and other IoT devices without losing a single frame or data packet. “Video, especially multi-source, high-definition video, provides a stringent performance test for any storage solution,” said Ken Claffey, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage Systems at Seagate, “Likewise, the data availability expectation of a robust, unified security platform like Genetec™ Security Center is formidable. The sheer volume of high-definition video streams, frames and metadata coupled with increasingly long retention periods, represent one of the most challenging IT infrastructures to deploy.” This enterprise-scale deployment provides a clear blueprint for a state-of-the-art, unified, high-performance physical security environment for modern, large-scale facilities. “Enterprises with global campuses and data center environments have mission-critical requirements, and securing a growing number of assets across huge facilities, while staying ahead of emerging threats is increasingly challenging,” said Christian Morin, Vice President of Product Groups at Genetec Inc., “Through our partnership with Seagate, this enterprise-scale deployment provides a great example of how enterprises can implement a holistic approach to security, that encompasses physical and cybersecurity while ensuring compliance with fast-changing regulatory mandates.”

Case Study

A Technology Triumvirate to Help Chill this Holiday Season

MassMediaLink India LLP SecurityLink IndiaSeptember 2, 2021November 14, 202406 mins

At this time of year, our thoughts turn to the heartwarming idea of a long holiday break enjoying sun and sea. Though it is unlikely that we can go on a typical holiday activity that we’ve loved, hopefully a nice relaxing break is still possible. But no matter where and how we will relax this summer, before we start packing we also feel a little anxious. Not just because we wonder what we should pack, but also about things that are left behind. We want to make sure everything is safe and sound during our travels. For households and business owners, this can be about a secured backyard, locked doors and windows, closed water valves, safe gas and electricity, and many others. Hikvision’s latest Pro Series cameras can take over the security duties for you. Now Hikvision has embedded both its AcuSense AI technology and its low-light ColorVu technology. This combination creates a powerful hybrid, providing 4K ultra HD color for you to see a scene clearly, and the intelligence to be able to recognize a security breach. What’s more, all these can be accessed and viewed remotely using Hik-Connect app on your smartphone or tablet. With this triumvirate of combined technologies and abilities, you can enjoy a laid-back life. See it clearly… We understand that you might be concerned about your pretty garden that you’ve been looking after with care, or your cat that is fed by a pet sitter during your leave. There is nothing better than a high quality, full-color real-time video which can reassure you; and that’s what the Hikvision cameras with ColorVu can provide. Hikvision ColorVu technology ensures the best possible vivid color to be reproduced in extremely dark scenarios, even on a moonless night. Cameras with ColorVu guarantee video with colorful details when they are needed. Access it easily… Next, it’s about how you see it. It is easy with the Hik-Connect app on your smartphone, which connects and communicates with all your security devices at your premises. With Hik-Connect, you have full access to real-time feeds, you can playback and receive event notifications remotely, even when you are lying on a beach. So you can easily look in on your pets or garden anytime. Understand it quickly… A carefree summertime break also means you are not disturbed as much as possible. You may have experienced annoying frequent alerts, from a traditional security system, and when you checked an event alert, you found nothing but a swaying tree in your front yard from the camera view. This type of ‘no-threat’ incident may happen from time to time, making people frustrated during a holiday. Hikvision AcuSense AI technology can help you solve this conundrum. By using AI, it enables a security camera to only trigger an alarm when a human or a vehicle pops up in the camera view, for example, if someone enters the restricted area in your warehouse. So you can focus on the real threats and act only when needed. At the end of the day, no one wants to be bothered in a relaxing environment. To take things one step further, some cameras with AcuSense AI can flash to deter the intruder away, or even allow you to give a warning through the built-in speaker. In this way, you don’t really need to worry and waste time on your holiday. A powerful combination With AcuSense and ColorVu, the latest Hikvision Pro series cameras are able to deliver much clearer, vivid color images helping you see the scene clearly. It also means that you can understand much more readily what you are looking at, with automated alerts demonstrating real security breaches, and everything can be viewed right in the palm of your hand. Let technology take away the stress, so you can chill out this holiday season!

HID Global Expands RFID Tag Family with Options for Item Tracking and Broader Inventory and Supply Chain Security

MassMediaLink India LLP SecurityLink IndiaSeptember 2, 2021November 14, 202403 mins

HID Seal Tag that protects metallic assets during storage and distribution HID Global, a worldwide provider of trusted identity solutions, recently announced two additions to its broad family of RFID asset-tracking tags. The HID SlimFlex Ultra technical label is optimized for the strongest durability compared to other labels, and the HID Seal edTamper Aura is designed to securely track and trace highly sensitive materials and digitally detects unauthorized access to sealed containers like boxes or crates. “We continue to solve customer challenges across a variety of RFID applications, from monitoring individual items under harsh conditions to ensuring that the seal integrity of secured inventory or high-value commercial shipping goods has not been breached,” said Jean Miguel Robadey, VP of Industrial Smart Components with HID Global. The HID SlimFlex Ultra label’s special construction increases durability when mounted to non-metallic flat or slightly curved surfaces. It joins HID’s comprehensive family of High Frequency (HF) and Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) RAIN® RFID tags that withstand exposure to harsh elements, chemicals, and extreme temperature for waste management, food distribution applications, and other asset tracking applications. Custom colors are available as well as 1D/ 2D barcode and laser-engraving options for special branding or other identification needs. Affixed to metal, non-metal items or containers, HID’s Seal edTamper Aura tag combines tamper-evident fasteners with RFID technology that transmits item ID, seal status, and a digital notification when a seal is compromised. They can be used for scanning of large sets of sealed items such as weapons, racks, controlled medications, or other assets needing protection. Main advantage of the new tag is that you can itemize and detect the status of the assets without opening the storage container during security checks using RAIN® RFID handheld or stationary readers. HID offers one of the industry’s most diverse and flexible lines of RFID tags and transponders for tracking objects, monitoring activity, and improving processes. Its offering is backed with more than two decades of RFID development and manufacturing expertise.

International

NIST Evaluates Face Recognition Software’s Accuracy for Flight Boarding

MassMediaLink India LLP SecurityLink IndiaSeptember 2, 2021November 14, 202408 mins

The most accurate face recognition algorithms have demonstrated the capability to confirm airline passenger identities while making very few errors, according to recent tests of the software conducted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The findings, released recently as Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Part 7: Identification for Paperless Travel and Immigration (NISTIR 8381), focus on face recognition (FR) algorithms’ performance under a particular set of simulated circumstances – matching images of travelers to previously obtained photos of those travelers stored in a database. This use of FR is currently part of the onboarding process for international flights, both to con[1]firm a passenger’s identity for the airline’s flight roster and also to record the passenger’s official immigration exit from the United States. The results indicate that several of the FR algorithms NIST tested could perform the task using a single scan of a passenger’s face with 99.5% accuracy or better – especially if the database contains several images of the passenger. “We ran simulations to characterize a system that is doing two jobs – identifying passengers at the gate and recording their exit for immigration,” said Patrick Grother, a NIST Computer Scientist and one of the report’s Authors, “We found that accuracy varies across algorithms, but that modern algorithms generally perform better. If airlines use the more accurate ones, passengers can board many flights with no errors.” Previous FRVT studies have focused on evaluating how algorithms perform one of two different tasks that are among FR’s most common applications. The first task, confirming that a photo matches a different one of the same person, is known as ‘one-toone” matching and is commonly used for verification work such as unlocking a smartphone. The second, determining whether the person in the photo has a match in a large database, is known as ‘one-to-many’ matching. This latest test concerns a specific application of one-to-many matching in airport transit settings, where travelers’ faces are matched against a database of individuals who are all expected to be present. In this scenario, only a few hundred passengers board a given flight. However, NIST also looked at whether the technology could be viable elsewhere in the airport, specifically in the security line where perhaps 100 times more people might be expected during a certain time window. (The database was built from images used in previous FRVT studies, but the subjects were not wearing face masks.) As with previous studies, the team used software that developers voluntarily submitted to NIST for evaluation. This time, the team only looked at software that was designed to perform the one-to-many matching task, evaluating a total of 29 algorithms. Among the report’s findings are: The seven top-performing algorithms can successfully identify at least 99.5% of passengers the first time around if the database contains one image of a passenger. If the database contains a single image of each individual, the study shows that for as many as 428 of 567 simulated flight boarding processes, with each flight carrying 420 passengers, the most accurate FR algorithm can identify passengers for boarding without any false negatives (meaning the software fails to match two images of the same person). Stated in terms of error rates, this corresponds to at least 99.87% of travelers being able to board successfully after presenting themselves one time to the camera. Six additional algorithms give better than 99.5% accuracy. Performance improves dramatically if the database contains multiple images of a passenger. The database gallery can contain more than one image of a single passenger. When an average of six prior images of a passenger are in the gallery, then all algorithms realize large gains: The most accurate algorithm will check the identities of passengers on 545 of 567 flights without any errors, and at least 18 developers’ algorithms are effective at identifying more than 99.5% of travelers accurately with a single presentation to the camera. Demographic differences in the dataset have little effect. The team explored differences in performance on male versus female subjects and also across national origin, which were the two identifiers the photos included. National origin can, but does not always, reflect racial background. Algorithms performed with high accuracy across all these variations. False negatives, though slightly more common for women, were rare in all cases. Grother said that the study does not address an important factor – the sort of camera that an FR system uses. Because airport environments differ, and because the cameras themselves operate in different ways, the report offers some guidance for tests that an airline or immigration authority could run to complement the NIST test results. Such tests would provide accuracy estimates that reflect the actual equipment and environment where it is used. “We do not focus on cameras, which are an influential variable,” he said, “We recommend that officials conduct the other tests we outline so as to refine their operations.”

National

Cybersecurity Remains the Biggest Barrier to Cloud Adoption

MassMediaLink India LLP SecurityLink IndiaSeptember 2, 2021November 14, 202404 mins

A Fortinet 2021 Cloud Security Report survey conducted by Cybersecurity Insiders found that cloud security concerns among cybersecurity professionals remains high as the adoption of public cloud computing continues to surge in the wake of the pandemic and the resulting massive shift to remote work. Organizations continue to rapidly migrate workloads from data centres to the cloud, and the trend has been accelerating during the recent Covid pandemic. The report indicates that 33% of organizations are running more than half of their workloads in the cloud today, and that number is set to rise to 56% in the next 12-18 months. Multi-cloud adoption is very much the norm as organizations were found to be operating in an expanded and diverse digital landscape. 71% of organizations are pursuing a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy as cloud is the preferred choice for integration of multiple services, scalability, or business continuity reasons. 76% of organizations are using two or more cloud providers and hybrid still accounts for more than one-third of the deployments. Rajesh Maurya Regional Vice President, India & SAARC at Fortinet “Organizations are grappling with a diverse set of tools that deliver disparate controls and highly variable security posture, specific to each cloud platform. Deeply integrated, cloud-native solutions can bridge this complexity by providing visibility, protection and control through consistent policies that span the diverse array of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. A common security framework not only delivers uniform security posture, it also simplifies cyber defense, compliance reporting and data sharing. With this approach organizations can freely adopt whichever cloud platform that suits their particular needs, confident that their data and applications will be safe, resilient and secure” Among the key barriers to faster cloud adoption, survey participants mentioned lack of visibility (53%), lack of control (46%), lack of staff resources or expertise (39%), and high cost (35%) as the most significant negative factors. Misconfiguration of cloud security remains the biggest security risk according to 67% of cybersecurity professionals in the survey. This is followed by exfiltration of sensitive data (59%) and tying at 49% are unauthorized access and insecure interfaces/ APIs. Multi-cloud environments add complexity and security challenges as organizations are most concerned with data protection (58%) followed by a lack of security skills (57%) and understanding how different solutions fit together (52%). Seventy-eight percent of surveyed cybersecurity professionals would find it very helpful to extremely helpful to have a single cloud security platform offering a single dashboard while allowing for configuration of policies to protect data consistently and comprehensively across the cloud. When asked how organizations source their cloud security, the vast majority said they prefer cloud native security (74%). This is followed by third-party cloud security solutions (48%) and managed service providers delivering security services (34%).