A life without PSIM…
Everyone is talking about Physical Security Information Management (PSIM) these days, but it’s yet another cost for increasingly cash- conscious companies to consider. Here, Andrea Kirkby looks at the potential costs of NOT going down the PSIM route - are you taking a gamble to save money?
Without PSIM, there's always the danger of sending someone to investigate an alarm without enough
information on the nature or
seriousness of the threat
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cameras, sensors, and the human element. There are some convincing reasons why organisations might want to spend money on PSIM, but with so many potential investments competing for limited funds, security may not be top of the list. However, PSIM specialists point out that not committing to PSIM carries major risks. For a start, companies that are acquisitive may find they simply can't stay in control of their systems. Mergers and acquisitions have always been an issue for integration, but that's becoming more than ever the case. With traditional security systems, it's difficult or impossible to bring together information from systems from different manufacturers. Ian Graham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, EMEA at Verint says that security systems
P
hysical Security Information Management (PSIM) aims to boost organisations' security by integrating all their sources of information, access control,
acquired over time by different divisions, and in different parts of the world, are unlikely to be standardised across the organisation. "Without PSIM," he says, "the result is often a piecemeal and inefficient approach to security." Furthermore, without PSIM, every time that information from those systems needs to be brought together to form a comprehensive security plan, considerable effort is required. Another issue which faces organisations who don't use
PSIM is that security managers may be presented with a high rate of false positives from individual systems such as access control, which can lead to high costs if each alert has to be acted on. When PSIM is used, that system can be checked against camera and other sensor input from the same area and the process of comparison between two systems could eliminate false positives automatically.
Managing resources
Adlan Hussain of CNL Software says that with PSIM: "You're reducing the cost of false positives, and also managing your resources better, and from a safety point of view you're not sending one man with a baton to deal with a situation that's much bigger than he can handle." Without PSIM, there's always the danger of sending someone to investigate an alarm without enough information on the nature or seriousness of the threat; and if all threats are treated as of the highest order of seriousness, the organisation will be wasting a huge amount of staff time and its own money. Kelly Fiedler of Vidsys says that without PSIM:
www.risk-uk.com Pic: Dreamstime
April 2012
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