Day: August 25, 2023

Shakti Leekha, Chief Business Officer, Enlite Research Private Limited In today’s fast-paced world, the importance of seamless and efficient access control systems cannot be overstated. The need for touchless, smarter, more secure solutions has led to the rise of touchless access controls. Enlite, a company that is developing wireless solutions for the built world, has taken access management to new heights with its groundbreaking access management solution. This cutting-edge system is reshaping the way we interact with our workspaces, providing a safer and more convenient access experience. Introducing Enlite: Pioneering the Future of Access Control Enlite is a rising star in the realm of sustainable and innovative solutions for the built world. Their mission is clear and powerful – to inspire tomorrow by creating a compelling today. Through years of research and development, they have unveiled Enlite Enable, an innovative touchless access management smart device that caters to the evolving needs of modern businesses. Enlite’s customer-centric approach and dedication to innovation have earned them trust across various sectors, from small startups to multinational corporations. With Enlite Enable, they are at the forefront of the access control revolution, empowering businesses to embrace a more secure, efficient, and touchless workspace. Top 10 Features of Enlite’s Access Management Solution Lightning fast contactless check-ins & checkouts: Enlite Enable transforms the way employees access their workspace. A simple tap of the RFID card or the use of an app on the smartphone grants them seamless entry and exit. This contactless approach not only enhances efficiency but also fosters a hygienic workplace, addressing health concerns in today’s world. Access & manage from anywhere: With Enlite’s webbased platform and app, administrators can manage access control from anywhere. Grant or revoke access, configure user permissions, and monitor real-time access events – all in the palm of your hand. Sync users automatically: Managing users becomes a breeze with Enlite’s automatic user synchronization. When employees join or leave the company, access permissions are updated in real-time, ensuring an always up-to-date access control system. Troubleshoot hardware online: Enlite’s proactive approach to hardware maintenance allows administrators to troubleshoot issues online, minimizing downtime and streamlining maintenance efforts. Download history logs: Comprehensive access history logs provide valuable insights into user movements and access events. Enlite enables you to download and analyze these logs for enhanced security and auditing purposes. Granular and site level permissions: Administrators have granular control over access permissions, allowing them to define specific access levels for individual users or groups. This flexibility extends to managing access control at both individual site levels and multiple locations. Easy integration: Enlite’s Access Management Solution seamlessly integrates with other security and business systems, creating a comprehensive security ecosystem. The interconnected approach enhances overall security and optimizes operations. Detailed reporting: Data-driven decision-making becomes effortless with Enlite’s detailed and customizable reporting. Monitor occupancy status, analyze access patterns, identify trends, and make informed decisions for a more secure and efficient workspace. Lockdown/ emergency mode: In critical situations, Enlite’s lockdown/ emergency mode enables administrators to secure the workspace instantly by restricting access to specific areas or the entire facility, enhancing workplace safety and preparedness. Scalability: As your business grows, Enlite’s Access Management Solution grows with you. Whether it’s a small office or a large corporate campus, the system can be easily scaled to meet your changing needs, ensuring a future-proof investment. Top Reasons to Choose Enlite’s Access Management Solution Multiple credentials for enhanced convenience: Enlite’s Access Management Solution offers multiple credential options giving users the freedom to choose the access method that suits them best. Appealing aesthetics enhancing the workspace: Enlite Enable’s sleek and minimalist design blends seamlessly with any architectural style, the smart product engineering allows for plug & play installation. Its high-quality PCBs & Heavy Duty components allow for long life. Automatic alerts for real-time security: Stay on top of security events with Enlite Enable’s automatic alerts, which instantly notify administrators of any unusual access events or security breaches. Web-based management for streamlined control: Administrators can conveniently manage the access system from anywhere using Enlite Enable’s user-friendly webbased platform, ensuring constant connectivity and control. Unlocking the Future of Access Control with Enlite Enable Enlite Enable Access Management represents the future of workspace security and efficiency. With its touchless check-ins, remote access management, automatic user synchronization, troubleshooting capabilities, and much more, it sets the benchmark for next-generation access control systems. This solution has already been deployed in buildings across India. By choosing Enlite Enable, businesses can unlock the full potential of their workspace security and access management needs. Embrace the touchless revolution with Enlite Enable and create a safer, more efficient, and technologically advanced workspace for your employees and visitors.  *Views expressed in the article are solely of the Author  

Milind Borkar – Expert Security Consultant As technology evolves rapidly from year to year, it becomes a challenging task to determine the requirements to build a secure, robust and almost foolproof system that will fulfill all basic security parameters. These parameters will vary for each new system as the same parameters cannot be applied across the board for all systems. A robust system that meets the security requirements for any new and/ or green field project, the following points will drive the decision-making process. Let’s use a CCTV system as an example: Budget and time available to implement the security system. Conduct a thorough site survey to determine security vulnerabilities and use it as vehicle to determine security requirements. This then becomes the primary driver along with the available budget. Detailed Camera information a. Mega-Pixel rating. b. Number of cameras required. c. Each camera location and it’s purposed function. d. Type of camera: Fixed, PTZ, indoor or outdoor, thermal performance, Field of View etc. e. Any other requirements that are specific to the location of the camera to fulfill its intended function. Storage capacity per camera – both inside as well as outside the camera. Storage architecture of the CCTV system. Network architecture of the CCTV system. Integration of other security components such as access control, perimeter intrusion detection systems, facial recognition, license plate recognition, under vehicle surveillance system, visitor management system, radar for areas not covered by cameras and other special requirements. Remote access/ cloud connectivity. Physical guarding. Video analytics. Vendor(s) selection. As one can see there are several factors that influence the decision-making process in building a security system. We will briefly go over each one of them in the following sections: Budget and time available As in any and every sphere of life the available budget is the key factor. Based on the available budget and time, a determined effort needs to be put in place to first build a project specific requirements document. Several trade-offs will need to be considered if the project requirements cost exceeds the available budget. This could be an iterative process that will consume time and money in the planning phase. Each new or green field project or an update/ refresh cycle of an existing deployment must go through this elaboration process to avoid surprises in the implementation/ build phase. Site survey Conducting a site survey is the basis of building a security system. This phase is the most critical where a thorough site survey is conducted to determine security vulnerabilities. Along with this a determination needs to be made as to what other systems are required to complement the main CCTV system. The illustrative airport diagram should give a very good idea of the other security components that need to be explored. Once this information is gathered and documented, then this information becomes the driving force for subsequent phases of the project. The best way to illustrate the process of building a security system is through an example. We are using an airport We will use the following diagram to highlight all the components that constitute a surveillance/ security system. We have used an airport as a use case. A typical airport is a super-set of any security deployment. as an example as it has a super-set of inputs that can be applied to any security system design. The color-coded table is used to distinguish the various inputs/ requirements received from the customer. The following table is a standard template that can be used to capture security requirements. These inputs are used to design the entire security system which can then be used to calculate the cost of the implementation. Using the above inputs from the customer and the respective BOQs for each airport, a complete design can be derived. The following table shows the output of the design process for 24 airports. Each airport has the same security requirements but BOQs are different. Once the design is completed to a 90% level of the target specification, the budgetary process can be started. Several vendors, RFQs etc. will be involved to go through an iterative process. This process will also vary for each geographical region. and must be considered. Without going into the details that vary for different geographical regions the important point to consider is the vendor selection process as it has a significant impact on the quality, robustness and overall cost of the system. Customers desirous of building a security system can engage subject matter experienced consultants who can guide and evaluate all the variables/ entities in the decision-making process. Cost optimization through simulation A security system design, implementation and build out are a complex system with many sub-systems that need to work with each other flawlessly. Every care must be taken in the early phases of the project as many variables are involved which can have a significant impact on the overall cost. One of the ways to help this process is to run a simulation based on the customer inputs. Through experience we have determined the following: The customer knows what he wants but does not know how to get there. Almost all vendors over sell their products and services which do not benefit the customer in any way. A consultant is required in all cases to systematically guide and evaluate all the options available to provide the highest performance at the lowest cost to the customer. We will now go through a simulation for one of 24 airports. We will show how our simulator determines the highest performance at the lowest cost. The following graph il lustrates this. The X-Axis shows the percentage of cameras running video analytics (VA). The Y-AXIS shows the cost in a standardized format. The DELTA between the lowest cost and the highest cost is 3x. VA stands for Video Analytics; VMS stands for Video Management Software. The GREEN line is the overall COST with the other colored lines that sum up to the overall GREEN line cost. Impact of Cost…

Vishak Raman, Vice President of Sales, India, SAARC, SEAHK & ANZ at Fortinet Distributed networks and a hybrid workforce are rapidly transforming today’s network environments. Workers divide their time between the office, home, and somewhere in between. Applications are split between on-premises, cloud, and Software-as-a- Service (SaaS) deployments. And data, once the sole province of the data center, is increasingly distributed across multiple locations. Over the past few years, ensuring that every user and device has secure, reliable access to the critical resources they need has been a top priority for IT teams. And access needs to be easy, no matter where the user is located or where applications and assets have been deployed The Fortinet 2023 State of Zero Trust Report looks at the progress IT teams have made in establishing a new sense of normalcy following the network upheaval initiated by the start of the global pandemic. With most employees suddenly working outside the network perimeter, IT teams scrambled to keep businesses operational. This effort often took the form of quick fixes and workarounds that exposed the weaknesses in their remote-worker strategy. It also highlighted the challenges of bringing their rapidly expanding network environments under a unified security umbrella. Outlier environments, like poorly secured home offices or misconfigured cloud solutions implemented by DevOps teams with little security experience, became new attack vectors for cybercriminals. It quickly became obvious that the implicit trust model in many organizations was a problem. However, too many IT teams tried to solve the issue in the traditional way by throwing technology at the problem. And it wasn’t long before they had a new problem of trying to get discrete point solutions to work together. These challenges are reflected in this report, which includes a number of key findings. Organizations of all sizes are actively implementing zero-trust strategies, but challenges remain: Companies have deployed considerably more solutions as part of their zero-trust strategies since 2021. Companies are looking to enable zero trust everywhere to minimize the impact of a breach. Although companies are moving forward, they still face challenges, including interoperability between solutions, consistent visibility, end-to-end policy enforcement, and application latency issues. Respondents also complained about the lack of reliable information to help them select and design a solution. Solutions must cover both on-premises and remote users with a consistent application access policy, and success has been mixed: Many solutions like zero-trust network access (ZTNA) and secure access service edge (SASE) are cloud-only. However, companies need to secure access to applications on-premises and outside of the network. Notably, nearly 40% of organizations still host more than half of their applications on-premises. The most significant challenge in any zero-trust strategy is the need for more integration between on-premises and cloud environments. Three-fourths of respondents have encountered issues with their hybrid workforce because of relying on cloud-only ZTNA. The top priorities for SASE solutions vary, but ‘security effectiveness’ is the most significant, with 58% placing it in their top three priorities. The consolidation of vendors and solution interoperability is crucial: Deploying solutions from multiple vendors has created many challenges for organizations, including introducing new security gaps and high operations costs. Larger companies are especially keen to consolidate solutions to simplify operations and reduce overhead. Zero-Trust Strategy Priorities The pandemic initiated a dramatic workforce transformation, with the vast majority of employees who traditionally worked on-premises suddenly working from home. This change triggered a corresponding dramatic upheaval in networks, essentially turning them inside out. Almost overnight, organizations needed to create secure network access to critical applications and resources through the perimeter, which often required upgrading remote access technologies such as edge security tools. At the same time, the limitations of traditional VPNs became apparent as hackers began accessing corporate resources by hijacking VPN tunnels through poorly protected home networks. Plans to move applications to the cloud were accelerated to offload pressure on the network perimeter and to improve the user experience. Of course, none of these changes were entirely unexpected. The move to a hybrid workforce had been in progress for some time, but the pandemic accelerated the change. Many organizations weren’t ready for the sudden transition to remote work, and they didn’t have the technologies in place that the circumstances demanded. Despite these issues, two-thirds of organizations have decided to maintain a hybrid workforce, with larger employers more likely to support remote workers than smaller ones. The challenge has been providing consistent access and exceptional user experience for workers who move between onpremises and remote work locations. It has been particularly difficult for the 72% of organizations that opted for a cloud-only ZTNA solution to provide secure access to critical applications. (Fig. 1) Early on, it became clear that the best approach for managing and securing a workforce with no permanent location was to initiate a zero-trust strategy, which eliminates implicit trust based on location and enforces the principle of least privilege. The reasons are broad for implementing zero trust, but 34% identified minimizing the impact of breaches and intrusions, and 29% cited enabling zero trust everywhere as their primary incentive. Interestingly, only 18% selected reducing capital expenditure. Although their top objective for choosing a zero-trust solution (ranked as either extremely or very important) was to ensure application-layer security (85%), compatibility with both on-premises and cloud settings (82%), and integration with the rest of their networking and security infrastructure (82%) were also very high. Organizations also report being better prepared to support and secure their hybrid workforce with a wide range of solutions already in place to support their zero-trust strategies. The solutions that have been implemented include secure web gateways (SWGs) at 75%, cloud access security brokers (CASB) at 72%, network access control (NAC) at 70%, ZTNA at 67%, next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) at 63%, and endpoint detection and response (EDR) with 62%. The one surprise was the relatively low implementation of multi-factor authentication (MFA) at only 52%, which is critical for preventing unauthorized access to applications and other resources. Those organizations that have not yet…