Category: National

Eagle Eye Networks, the leading global provider of smart cloud video security, recently shared the trends that will have the biggest impact on video surveillance, security, and use of analytics to drive business intelligence and improvement in 2021. Customers are asking for cloud – advanced analytics will transform video surveillance systems into even more valuable business solutions, compliance requirements are constantly evolving, IT departments are engaging with, and in many cases owning video surveillance, and customers are expecting systems to be open and connected. “A number of factors are driving the video surveillance trends in 2021,” said Hans Kahler, Vice President of Operations at Eagle Eye Networks, “Innovation from companies like Eagle Eye Networks and our partners is leading and meeting the demands of customers for their video surveillance systems to provide business insights in addition to security. Combine the promise of AI and cloud video surveillance with the volatility, instability, and remote work environment of 2020 and we have an environment where people are looking for their video surveillance and security systems to deliver more business value than ever before. The acceleration of cloud adoption and use of analytics to provide improved security and drive business improvement will make 2021 a transformative year for the industry.” Video Surveillance and Security Trends for 2021 Customers are asking for cloud: The shift to the benefits of cloud in the video surveillance space are powerful and undeniable, including major cost savings, heightened data security, remote access and maintenance, flexible storage and retention, scalability, increased stability, and disaster recovery. Analytics and AI turn security systems into business solutions: Video surveillance systems are not just for security anymore, they’re also a valuable tool for business intelligence (BI). While AI has been talked about for several years, its deployment has lagged. This year, we’ll see AI move from the lab to practical adoption. Compliance requirements are constantly evolving: As video surveillance becomes a more widely adopted tool across industries and continents and more industries are using video for compliance purposes, regulating its use is becoming more prevalent. IT departments more engaged and owning video surveillance: IT leaders have not only gotten involved in the video management system, they’re actually owning it. As part of their IT strategy, corporations are leveraging video for business process improvement while reducing unnecessary operational overhead. Demand for open, integrated systems: An open and connected ecosystem makes it possible for businesses and developers to integrate any number of applications on a single video management system (VMS) platform. The platform handles all the heavy lifting of interfacing with the cameras, recording video, securely transmitting and storing video to the cloud, and making video available for use in the integrated applications. The days of vendors ‘locking’ users into their cameras or touting ‘hybrid’ systems (which require upgrades to vendor hardware to get new features) will not be accepted.  

In spite of a highly unusual 2020, the security industry’s constant transformation has not stopped. Several significant shifts in the use of technology are even accelerating – for example the increasing applications of multi-perception technologies, the convergence of security systems, the popularity of artificial intelligence, and the rise of cloud solutions. These changes are expanding and reshaping the scope of the security industry, from keeping people and assets safe to creating more secure, efficient and intelligent environments. Looking ahead at 2021, we have high hopes, and Hikvision would like to share some encouraging ideas and thoughts here regarding key trends that may affect the security industry in both the short- and long-term. Intelligent video technology helping during the pandemic In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are prioritizing finding ways to resume operations safely. Intelligent video technology has shown great potential to help companies keep their employees and customers safe while getting back to work. Powered by AI, security cameras monitor densely populated locations to ensure employees follow vital safety precautions – including social distancing, mask wearing and flow control – and provide initial temperature screenings. Employees are avoiding unnecessary physical contact with shared hardware in this tense era, accelerating the touchless access control system trend we have seen in the market. Numerous modes of touchless verification – face recognition, palmprint recognition, NFC and QR codes – are being heavily promoted. Multi-dimensional perception For a long time, capturing visual images was the core and only perception capability for video security systems. But with the development and application of sensing technologies, more powerful edge computing and intelligent algorithms, integrated security devices and systems that employ multiple sensors are becoming possible. Now, more perception capabilities such as radar detection, multispectral imagery, humidity and temperature measurement, and gas pressure detection, are being integrated with video cameras and systems. This integration extends perception capabilities of these video cameras and systems, and widens their applications by enabling the collection and use of multi-dimensional information. For example, a promising approach right now integrates cameras with centimeter- and millimeter-wave radar technology, which can extend perception beyond the visual range to object detection and movement tracking up to and over 100 meters in the distance. Multispectral imagery is another good approach for cameras to perceive information from the non-visible light spectrum. For instance, innovative ultraviolet (UV) detection boosts the perception capabilities of cameras as far as even capturing invisible electric arc phenomena; this technology finds a key application in safety-checks at aging power grids. Multi-dimensional perception capabilities will play a fundamental role in taking the video security industry to the next level, and we constantly see growing numbers of integrated security devices and systems with multiple sensors. Visibility – Any time, any condition Users have come to expect uninterrupted performance from their video cameras, regardless of season, the weather, and certainly the time of day. It’s vital to have cameras that can respond effectively to capture clear images, no matter what time of day or night or how bad the weather is. Nowadays, low light imaging technology that provides colorful images in dark environments and at night is becoming popular in the security industry, and customers have shown a preference toward cameras with color imaging 24/7. More front-end cameras are now equipped with low light imaging technology to make sure they can ‘see’ and reproduce image color both day and night. And in other extreme conditions such as heavy rain, snow, fog or smog, how do cameras ensure visibility? Industry professionals are tending to choose thermal imaging that measures heat – or thermal radiation – to generate images from their field of view. With thermal imaging, the rendered image is far less affected by even the most light-obscuring of these conditions. 5G technology for UHD and wireless video security 5G technology may bring great changes to the security industry. 5G’s greater bandwidth and lower latency makes the regular transmission of high quality images possible, and, with the widespread adoption of ultra-high-definition (UHD) cameras, could bring new opportunities for video security. Furthermore, reliable wireless transmission over 5G technology will revolutionize the currently-wired video security market. In the forthcoming 5G networks, wireless cameras will proliferate, and more edge devices will be connected in remote locations. This will also facilitate wide and fast deployment of AI applications in edge devices. Convergence of multiple security systems We operate in an industry where users expect comprehensive solutions. The concept of systems working seamlessly together has long been desired by the vast majority of security professionals. The benefits of converging multiple security systems – including video, access control, alarm, fire prevent and emergency management – into a unified platform are manifold, with efficiency and cost-effectiveness the most obvious. For example, when an alarm goes off, an integrated system automatically links that alert to the output of the nearest camera, so the whole situation can be easily witnessed from the monitoring center. This translates to a considerable reduction in time and effort, and most importantly, costs. Savings in workforce, installer time, separate maintenance costs, separate software licenses etc., all add up to create an attractive package for customers. What’s more, convergence makes security solutions scale. Existing infrastructure will meet and manage future needs on the same central platform. Digital transformation of enterprises enabled by video security systems Aside from security and protection, the added value video security systems offer has expanded to assist enterprise-level businesses in their digital transformation process and gain insights into development opportunities. Empowered by AI analytics, today’s smart video security solutions are designed to improve automation and operational efficiency in various vertical markets including traffic, retail, manufacturing, building, education, and more. Retailers, for instance, better understand foot traffic in their stores and optimize their merchandising strategies with help of smart video solutions. These solutions have been designed with digital dashboards to display data and information that come from the integrated in-house enterprise information systems. Operators can use these systems to get real-time status updates to help them make the…

Times are changing fast and so is the need for using and combining technologies in new ways. With the new edition of Milestone Marketplace, buyers will not only find the complementary hardware and software functionality, but they will also explore solution services when building best-of-breed video management solutions. COVID19 has forced businesses, cities, and entire countries to operate in new ways and increased the demand for new technologies and digital solutions. A versatile use of video solutions that can be expanded with more functionalities helps companies thrive when the world changes, whether the need is to ensure public safety, secure access to buildings, or check adherence to social distancing rules. Milestone Marketplace is empowering businesses to explore the unmatched possibilities of video solutions, relevant to companies looking for a new video solution and for existing users of Milestone XProtect looking to enhance the solution’s functionality. In addition to verified hardware and software, the new release of Milestone Marketplace also holds solution services with a total of more than 500 options to choose from. The global digital platform includes powerful technologies, like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, video analytics, GIS and GPS along with combined solutions tailor made to meet several business challenges. The partners behind this are all part of the Milestone Community, ready to help businesses use video solutions to solve new challenges. “Marketplace is primarily a connection platform to help end-users make the most of their XProtect investment. Through it, our customers in India can now connect directly with Milestone partners and seek their advice and expertise on different challenges, use cases, and technology. Being an open ecosystem it helps our customers with flexibility and future proofing, and the collaborative nature of Milestone Marketplace means new use cases can be explored and deployed in partnership with Milestone and other members” Explore, connect, deploy Milestone Marketplace allows buyers access to a vast catalog of Milestone Systems XProtect compatible software, hardware and solution services, as well as recommendations and guidance on how to solve specific challenges. Moreover, buyers can filter through a network of trusted Milestone integration partners to find the best fit for their business across the globe. Customer cases, documentation, implementation guides and demos are just some of the elements made available by the partners using Milestone Marketplace to allow customers to explore solutions available to them. “Since we first introduced Milestone Marketplace in 2019, we’ve been working to extend the experience for both customers and partners when searching for and creating XProtect compatible solutions. With this version we’ve onboarded integrators as a new partner type, improved the search functionality, and added use categories to name but a few, all with the aim to offer a future-proof platform open to integrating with innovation from around the world,” said Kenneth Hune Petersen, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Milestone Systems.  

Milestone Systems, a leading provider of open platform video management, has announced the appointment of Sandesh Kaup as the new Country Manager for India and SAARC. Sandesh Kaup re-joins the Milestone family after four years in a highly successful leadership position at Allied Telesis – a network infrastructure/ telecommunications company, involved with secure IP/ Ethernet switching solutions. Sandesh Kaup comes with over two decades of experience and significant exposure handling multiple global companies. Milestone has been a part of his DNA since 2011, running the local business until 2016 and largely responsible for the incredible growth the organisation experienced in that time. In addition, he has developed expertise in building businesses for companies like Bosch Security, Ingram Micro, and Anixter during his early career. Sandesh comes with a Bachelor of Engineering in Instrumentation from Mumbai University. Jordan Cullis, Director for APAC at Milestone Systems said of the appointment, “Sandesh not only brings his exhaustive experience of two decades in the security industry, but has prior experience with Milestone where he has displayed illustrious leadership and yielded the company to great growth numbers. His experience, contacts in the Indian market and sales focused management style will be instrumental in recovering the region after such a difficult, covid-effected 2020.” “It is like coming back home. I am excited to be back with Milestone, especially at a time when India is presenting great opportunities for the VMS industry growth. I am sure that the global expertise which I have gained over the years will help me take Milestones’ businesses to newer highs.” said Sandesh Kaup, Country Manager at Milestone Systems, India and SAARC, “Also, with the most recent Marketplace 2.0 release, Milestone now has unmatched possibilities of video solutions for organizations looking for new video solutions and for the existing users of Milestone XProtect who are looking to enhance the present functionality. This opens up great opportunities for us to work with even more partner to take our solutions to major business accounts in India.” In his earlier tenure at Milestone, Sandesh had nurtured the sales growth in India, which saw a 40% YoY growth from 2011 to 2015. Apart from building important business accounts he also played an instrumental role in building synergies and creating an ecosystem (solution partner) across server storage, networking, access control manufacturer, and command control software and other third-party software. Sandesh has also earned industry accolades like the Milestone Leadership Compass Award in 2014 and was the winner of the President Club 2015 Award for the Best Growth year-on-year.  

Videonetics, world’s leading AI & DL powered Unified Video Computing Platform (UVCP™) development company, has recently launched its third generation of Intelligent VMS that delivers unified, next generation user interface, military-grade security, rugged with unprecedented levels of high availability and a future ready solution, for any size of deployment across various industry verticals such as smart & safe cities, critical infrastructure, industrial, mass transit, education, healthcare and retail to name a few. Building on more than a decade of R&D in the domain of video computing, computer vision, artificial intelligence and machine learning based technologies, Videonetics released its Intelligent VMS 3.0 that encompasses multiple video computing services in a unified, homogenous software architecture platform and goes beyond mere ‘capture-record-display’ generation of video management. Videonetics has been ranked #1 video management software provider in India, and among the top 5 in Asia (IHS/ Informa Tech Research). Some of the key differentiators of Videonetics Intelligent VMS 3.0 are as follows: Next generation user interface The Intelligent VMS 3.0 offers a modernized user experience with intuitive, responsive, adaptive, and friendly interface. The interface supports user-specific camera layouts, hierarchical camera groups to enable the user to multi-task and improve operational efficiency. Intelligent VMS supports all standard web browsers and provides mobile apps for both iOS and Android platforms. Highly secured The Intelligent VMS 3.0 is cyber security hardened to meet today’s evolving threat landscape, by ensuring data safety and accessibility only to the authorized personnel with security protection. It offers various security measures such as multi-factor authentication, SHA 256, RSA & AES encryptions, video watermarking, distributed storage management for critical data, and secured channel communication to name a few. Business continuity The DC-DR (data center – disaster recovery) architecture of Intelligent VMS 3.0 is built considering the complexities of vast amounts of video data generated from large number of cameras in the field, protecting the same from loss or corruption and transferring data to another location. The DC-DR framework addresses the challenges through a practical, flexible and service-oriented architecture. It ensures business continuity with minimum or no service disruption. Collaborative vigilance The Intelligent VMS 3.0 features collaborative surveillance platform for the operators to exchange messages and share observations. It offers features such as sharing camera views, importing operator screens and chat room for discussions. Geo-fence based situational awareness The Intelligent VMS 3.0 goes beyond conventional map-based viewing to geo-fence based situational awareness possibilities. User can easily draw a virtual fence with geo coordinates or simply using mouse to see relevant cameras within the fence with all the events of interest. The Intelligent VMS 3.0 also comes with a unique feature of ‘neighbourhood view’ in which a camera can be defined as a master camera which in turn can be associated with nearby camera to provide complete neighbourhood view in case of any even of interest. It has ready integrations with map services such as Google Map, OpenStreetMap etc., to provide drag-and-drop of the cameras for alerts, archived, and live video feeds. The in-built pencil tool helps in associating the cameras on the map for a quick geo-situational awareness. Scalable and Cloud-ready The scalability of Intelligent VMS 3.0 is unlimited by design of the architecture. The computing nodes can be provisioned as and when required, and they auto-register themselves to the system with minimum configuration which makes it extremely easy to deploy. Many of the large enterprises and in fact even government organizations are now adopting the ‘Cloud First’ policy and most of their business processes are already utilising the benefits of Cloud these days. Intelligent VMS 3.0 comes with built in readiness for deploying it over cloud be it a public, private or a hybrid cloud. It has been built on a cloud agnostic stack to ensure that it can be deployed on any cloud of customer’s choice to ensure full flexibility, openness, and therefore lowest cost of ownership. It comes with its own server resource orchestration technology, streaming service engine and intelligent storage technology to help customer take full advantage of the cloud setup. Intelligent VMS 3.0 also comes with ready integrations with popular cloud service providers. AI powered I n the series of another ‘firsts’ Intelligent VMS 3.0 comes with pre integrated artificial intelligence and deep learning framework called DeeperLook™ – an indigenously designed highly efficient AI framework which ensures quick and easy deployment of AI based video analytics use cases for various verticals. The framework offers over 100+ such AI based video analytics use cases for different industry segments.  

Global security manufacturer, Gallagher, has recently appointed Shamsher Singh as the Regional Manager for North India. Singh joined the team lead by Gautham NV to support Gallagher’s growing business opportunities in India – including a significant project currently underway with the Indian Air Force. Singh brings to the role over 11 years of sales and business development experience working with multinational companies. He holds an MBA in Marketing and International Business and an engineering degree in Electronics and Communication. “We’re thrilled to welcome Shamsher to the Gallagher India team,” said Ian Meadows, Sales Manager for India, the Middle East, and Africa, “With the skills and experience Shamsher brings to the table, he will play a key role in our North India growth.” Singh started in the role on 5 October 2020 and will work closely with Gallagher’s network of channel partners to bring the latest security technology to the region. A technology leader in integrated access control, intruder alarms management and perimeter protection, Gallagher’s security solutions are in use within the highest levels of national and local government, military, commercial, industrial, healthcare, transportation, and academic organisations in more than 130 countries.  

Held from 18 to 20 November, the 2020 edition of InfoComm India, a fully-online experience hosted on the specially-tailored GoVIRTUAL platform, was attended by 3,410 unique visitors. While a scaled-down version of what would have been a conventional in-person exhibition, InfoComm India GoVIRTUAL was no less exciting, helmed by 92 exhibitors who collectively presented a total of 183 live product demos and 28 webinar sessions. This also marks the first time in organizer InfoCommAsia’s history that it has delivered a fully-digital event. Cutting-edge show walks its talk “ The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruption to businesses around the world. InfoComm India was not spared either, and we had to make the difficult decision of cancelling the in-person show earlier this year,” said Richard Tan, Executive Director, InfoCommAsia, “Yet in every crisis lies an opportunity. Knowing full well the value that InfoComm India has brought to technology innovators and industry end-users over the years, we quickly pivoted and committed to delivering a digital event. As a proponent of technology, InfoCommAsia has walked the talk, adopting cutting-edge innovations such as artificial intelligence and live streaming to achieve a first-of-its-kind event.” The unique and ground-breaking GoVIRTUAL platform is a culmination of over five months of intense development. The platform boasts a range of innovative yet easy-to-use features that helps deepen the business experience for both exhibitors and visitors. Designed to be highly intuitive, it allows both exhibitors and visitors to ensure business continuity, wherever they are in the world. The AI-powered algorithm matched exhibitors with relevant visitors, and vice versa. Through the user’s behaviour, interactions and searches performed on the platform, the algorithm learns and continuously refines its accuracy to provide highly-relevant business matches. At one glance, exhibitors can browse the profiles of sales leads they should be reaching out to while visitors can connect with shortlisted technology innovators whose solutions are transforming their industries. Real-time, live product demos allowed brand ambassadors to explain the salient features of their solutions to the viewers. Thanks to integrated video, audio and chat functions, both presenters and audience can engage in real-time conversations. Exhibitors’ virtual showcases mimic actual exploration experience on the show floor, allowing visitors to meet with exhibitors and see their technologies up close and in action. The integrated video, audio and chat functions here let visitors interact with exhibitors, just like visiting an exhibitor’s booth in person. InfoComm India Summit, the show’s learning platform, hosted a series of webinars. Topical sessions include discussions on a post-pandemic future, India’s smart urbanization journey, cybersecurity, digitalization of healthcare and education, and more. Platinum Partner Crestron Electronics (India) shared that the GoVIRTUAL platform has succeeded in functionally replicating the in-person show experience. “Initially when we were planning this event, we were not expecting ourselves to be so busy,” said Farhan Walele, National Product Manager (Sales), “However, from 10am to 6pm, we had to be at the booth, standing from morning to evening, similar to past InfoComm India events. The only difference is we are now doing this in the comfort of our office.” Echoing this sentiment Kirti Shetti, Director – Operations, Kramer Electronics India said, “InfoComm India GoVIRTUAL measured up to what would have been the physical InfoComm India event. It definitely did justice.” The live demos and webinars drew substantial interest from show visitors. In total, 2,148 visitors participated in the live demos while 3,082 delegates watched the webinars over a period of 3 days. GoVIRTUAL to be adopted across future InfoCommAsia shows With the successful roll out, GoVIRTUAL now serves as an effective proof of concept, and InfoCommAsia plans to adopt this powerful platform for all of its upcoming marquee shows in 2021 – InfoComm China slated for July, InfoComm India in September and InfoComm Southeast Asia in October. Each show will be a hybrid of in-person and virtual platforms. Additionally, InfoCommAsia will host regular one-day preview events on GoVIRTUAL leading up to the main hybrid event, with each one focusing on a different vertical and geographic markets and its business end-users. InfoComm India and InfoComm India GoVIRTUAL 2021 The next hybrid InfoComm India will take place 15- 17 September 2021 at the Bombay Exhibition Center, Mumbai.  

VisionPass joins IDEMIA’s MorphoWave™ Compact fingerprint device as the market’s most efficient and hygienic range of contactless biometric devices for access control IDEMIA, the leading global provider of Augmented Identity, is launching its advanced contactless facial recognition access control device VisionPass for the Indian market. Their way of living has been drastically impacted during the last few months, creating completely new requirements for a contactless approach when it comes to accessing public or private spaces. IDEMIA’s contactless devices for access control answer these new requirements by offering a hygienic, contactless and frictionless experience. VisionPass, the ultimate face recognition device for physical access and time & attendance control, extends IDEMIA’s range of contactless devices for access control. Designed as per the needs and requirements of end-users, VisionPass offers a unique experience – being identified on-the-move in less than 1 second thanks to its powerful algorithms. For more user comfort, VisionPass works in all light conditions from complete darkness to bright sunlight, with all face types and with various vertical and horizontal angles to cope with users of different heights (1.20-2.00 meters/ 3ft 11”-6ft 6”). As VisionPass is designed for access control and security, it can also counter spoofing attempts by image, video or 3D masks. Peeyush Jain, Vice President Terminals business, IDEMIA said, “In the last few months, daily lives have been drastically impacted apprising us with new challenges, and with it there has surfaced a need for a contactless approach especially while accessing public or private spaces. Our contactless devices for access control address such new requirements by offering hygienic and frictionless experiences to end users. With VisionPass & MorphoWave solutions at hand, we now have the most powerful contactless biometric terminals available in India for organizations to ensure a ‘zero human contact’ access experience. Secured access through these robust, reliable, and cutting-edge terminals is unparalleled, be it with facial recognition, or a touchless 3D fingerprint scan.” IDEMIA recently won the Security Industry Association (SIA) New Product Showcase Award in the Biometric category for VisionPass facial recognition device. IDEMIA already received a similar Award in 2018 for MorphoWave Compact, a biometric device that can scan and verify four fingerprints in less than a second. This new Award, this time for a facial recognition device, confirms IDEMIA’s ironclad technology in the field of contactless biometrics for security applications. They have all become hyperaware of the criticality of hygiene in these challenging times. With superlative biometric terminals like VisionPass and MorphoWave Compact and their touchless sensor technology in the Indian market, establishments now have the choice to ensure a fully contactless experience for access control everywhere for authorized users, through these robust, reliable, and powerful devices. With VisionPass (facial recognition) and MorphoWave™ Compact (fingerprints), IDEMIA confirms its leadership in contactless biometrics for secure, convenient and hygienic access control. IDEMIA provides a trusted environment enabling citizens and consumers alike to perform their daily critical activities (such as pay, connect and travel), in the physical as well as digital space.  

Array Networks, the network functions platform company, recently announced that the AG Series SSL VPN Appliances (vxAG on AVX7800) has earned the ICSA Labs SSL-TLS VPN 4.0 certification. The vxAG virtual secure access gateway runs on Array’s Network Functions Platform as well as virtualized servers and industry-standard hypervisors to flexibly enable on-demand, full-featured secure access for users whenever and wherever needed. ICSA Labs that began with the mission to increase awareness of the need for computer security and to provide education about various security products and technologies is today one of most respected security technology testing organizations that offers independent validation of SSL-TLS conformance and efficacy. Enterprises worldwide rely on ICSA Labs to set and apply objective testing and certification criteria for measuring product compliance and performance. While the testing for the SSL-TLS VPN 4.0 certification was performed only on the vxAG (on AVX7800), the certification extends beyond to include the other members of the Array AG series SSL VPN appliances and Array AVX series network functions platform family. ICSA Labs’ clients benefit by working closely with technical analysts, leveraging criteria for product development, accessing research and participating in consortia, all with the objective of contributing to improved products that benefit customers and the security ecosystem ICSA Labs SSL-TLS VPN testing confirms that AG Series SSL VPN appliances properly implement TLS with strong cipher suite support while providing certificate management and validation. Additionally, they include proper authentication and authorization, session control and secure operation in either a Reverse Web Proxy or Layer 3 VPN mode. ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon, develops and performs comprehensive, unbiased, third-party security certification testing. ICSA Labs tested the vxAG virtual appliance running on Array Networks’ AVX7800 hardware. vxAG indicates that the virtual appliance runs on other hypervisors. The SSL-TLS certification criteria, version 4.0 is certification criteria for products that implement SSL-TLS for data confidentiality, authentication and integrity assurance for internetwork transactions. ICSA Labs tests SSL-TLS products against a standard yet evolving set of criteria. The SSL-TLS certification criteria is composed of both functional and assurance requirements. The criteria requirements define an industry-accepted standard that all products claiming to have SSL-TLS capabilities must attain. ICSA Labs certification helps enterprises, service providers and government agencies identify and evaluate security solutions with confidence. Array’s scalable secure access gateway centralizes control over access to applications, desktops, files, networks and websites from a broad range of remote and mobile devices providing secure connectivity, end-point and server-side security and application-level AAA policies on a per-user basis. AG series physical and virtual appliances are deployed at the network perimeter or in front of business-critical resources to provide secure remote and mobile access for employees, guests, partners and other communities of interest. Array’s secure access gateways are ideal for consolidating remote and mobile access on a single robust platform to provide end-users with a consistent login experience ensuring consistent access policies and minimize potential attack vectors. Each Array SSL VPN shares a comprehensive secure access feature set, right-sized seat license packs and an option for low-cost business continuity contingency licenses. The AG series SSL VPN appliances are ideal for enterprises that need to support multiple communities of interest as well as service providers that need to provide remote access to globally dispersed data centers.  

Union budget 2021 presented by Nirmala Sitharaman, the Union Finance Minister of India on 01 February 2021 was a turning point and a landmark budget which is appreciated by all sections of industry acknowledging the bold initiatives, intent and paradigm shift in strategic planning to propel the growth of Indian economy on the vision of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’,‘Self Reliant India’ and ‘Digital India.’ Muted criticism in a democracy like India proves the degree of acceptance. To me, it gave a feeling of ‘1991 moment’ when India took unprecedented acceleration in reforms. The major structural shift in policy reflects Central Govt’s resoluteness and strong conviction to achieve strategic independence by reduction in imports; unlike in past most of the Govt’s drafted the budget with an eye on the vote bank. Likely impact on the Private Security Industry (PSI) The private security industry does not fall into the bracket of manufacturing segment; it is grossly a service industry. This union budget is likely to have a significant impact on the private security industry in the following ways: Huge investment in infrastructure development like highways, metro rail, air ports, SEZ and sea ports etc., is going to increase business opportunity for providing security and allied services like toll tax management. Disallowing delayed deposit of PF as expenses will compel us to ensure its timely deposit. Reduced time limit for reopening of tax assessments to 3 years and establishment of faceless Income Tax Tribunals would reduce harassment. Announcement of voluntary scrapping policy to phase out polluting vehicles is likely to impact all PSIs but more so those providing CIT services. Impact of increase in custom duty on electronic items on PSI PSAs use a large number of electronic items like mobile phones, surveillance equipment, PCs, servers and related equipment. The increase in import duty on these therefore is likely to increase the cost to the private security agencies. These cost increment would be mostly applicable to the procurement of new equipment. Existing electronic equipment already being held will have the impact only in their repairs or upgrading. Rationale of Govt’s imposition of additional custom duty The government proposed to impose import duty on components of mobile phones and chargers as a part of review of 400 exemptions in customs duty including those applicable on the mobile devices segment. Govt cited following rationale for its action: To enhance local value addition. To align the thrust on easy access to raw materials and exports of value addition. To ensure twin objectives of promoting domestic manufacturing and helping India get on to global value chain and exports. Conclusion The Central Govt’s move to make India a manufacturing hub by boosting domestic manufacturing and to transform it as part of global supply chain as an intent and strategy not only sounds good but appears to be viable. Domestic manufacturing is getting a leg up in allocation of funds and recent procurement orders for instance are TEJAS from HAL with LCH in pipeline and latest version of ARJUN from DRDO, ATAG gun from Bharat Forge, drones from a startup and ship building. Domestic manufacturers of mobile phones like DIXON Technology and household electrical appliances by Amber Enterprises are likely to scale up manufacturing and reduce share of imports. Even during COVID 19 pandemic Indian domestic manufacturers played vital and major role in manufacturing of PPEs, medical devices, ventilators and ICU beds to reduce dependence on imports. In my view, the rhetoric of ICEA which is umbrella body for the mobile manufacturers should be taken with a pinch of salt. India must be able to gain a position of strength in manufacturing to counter the coercive protectionist trade policies of China and other nations to safeguard its national interests.