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Spending on Equipment

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Does your organization need facial recognition technology as part of your security system?

According to Forbes, facial recognition software is already being used to:

  • put Snapchat and Instagram face filters on your face (using object recognition)
  • identify your friends in Facebook photos
  • unlock your phone
  • create CG characters in movies
  • verify identity
  • identify imposters and screen passengers at airports
  • prevent crime in retail spaces
  • tailor advertising to you individually
  • find missing children / individuals

While there are security-related benefits to facial recognition, there are also hurdles with the technology. For example, the technology tends to have high rates of racial bias as well as insufficient rates of accuracy. Furthermore, many current (and future) applications are used without the permission of the public, causing serious privacy issues.

So, is the cost (both financial and social) of the technology worth it for your school or business? The technology doesn’t come cheap – companies selling facial recognition software make millions in revenue each year.

As we’ve talked about on this blog before, while we firmly believe in security technology, we find that improving your organization’s policies and procedures (and making sure your people are properly trained) can go a long way towards keeping your people safe. See these posts for more on this:

Read This Before You Budget for Security

Include Everyone in Your Emergency Training

Layers of Security

Technology is Not Your Crutch

Visitor Management

Yes, technology is good, and technology is important to keep your people safe. If you have unlimited funds, facial recognition software may be appropriate. But don’t rely on technology like facial recognition software to keep your people safe.

 

Most Small Businesses Don’t Recover from Data Breaches — Here’s How to Be an Exception

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Thanks to Oliver at disastersafety.info for a guest post today.

If customers don’t trust your business to protect their personal data, they’ll go elsewhere. It’s a hard truth that a growing number of small business owners are realizing: According to Experian, the number of data breaches occurring each year has more than doubled since 2015, and small businesses are a common target.

Small businesses that suffer a data breach struggle to recover. A 2018 report from Kaspersky Lab found that data breaches cost small business $120K on average — a sum that leads many small businesses to close up shop.

Even if your business can handle the financial blow of a data breach, it may never regain customers’ trust. Identity theft leading to credit card fraud is a common outcome of small business data breaches. After coping with the financial and emotional distress of identity fraud, consumers are reluctant to return to the business that exposed their sensitive data.

The Right Way to Respond to a Data Breach

The steps you take in response to a data breach has a big impact on your business’s longevity. If you want to preserve your small business’s reputation and recover financially, these are the steps to take.

1. Deploy your incident response plan

If you’ve prepared for a data breach, you’ll have an incident response plan and IT staff trained to enact it. Unfortunately, many small businesses don’t take this step before their first data breach.

If you don’t have an incident response plan in place, don’t improvise. You could make the situation worse or make it impossible to identify the source and scope of the breach. Instead, hire digital forensic specialists who can determine where a breach came from, stop the breach, and recover lost data. Contracting with a team like Secure Forensics is also a smart move for businesses too small to warrant a dedicated IT team.

2. Notify the authorities

Small businesses affected by a data breach have a legal responsibility to notify the authorities. Use this map to find the data breach notification laws in your state.

3. Inform affected customers

Never hide a data breach from your customers. The sooner you inform customers their data has been compromised, the better they can protect themselves against identity theft. Letting your customers learn about a data breach from a third party also degrades trust in your business.

The right response, on the other hand, mitigates damage to your small business’s reputation. Kroll explains how to notify customers of a data breach in a way that both helps your clientele and rebuilds confidence in your business.

Preventing Future Data Breaches

You might think your small business can’t stop a determined hacker from gaining access to your data. However, internal errors are at the root of most data breaches. Negligent employees and contractors are behind 48 percent of data breaches, and problems with internal systems contribute to 35 percent of breaches. By addressing these internal weaknesses, small businesses can greatly reduce their vulnerability to data breaches and fraud.

These are the steps to take to prevent another breach:

1. Conduct a risk assessment

In order to mitigate risk, you need to know where it is. If you have an IT staff with the expertise to run a cybersecurity risk assessment, make the task a priority. Otherwise, hire a company that can identify vulnerabilities and find solutions to your small business’s security risks.

2. Train employees

Do your employees and contractors use strong passwords, know how to identify suspicious emails, and understand the importance of protecting company-owned devices? Regular training is key to eliminating internal vulnerabilities.

3. Protect credit card data

In addition to using PCI-compliant payment processing, small businesses should protect customers’ payment data by using chip-enabled credit card readers, avoiding storage of credit card security codes, and encrypting all stored credit card information.

Preventing data breaches and fraud should be a top priority for any small business that handles customer credit cards, email addresses, and other sensitive data. With proper cybersecurity measures and employee training, many data breaches can be avoided. And when prevention isn’t possible, the proper response and the right team of professionals gets your business back on track.

 

Image via Unsplash

Mobile Security Operations Console

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A security operations console is a key part of security management in any given organization. In a perfect world, an organization’s security operations console would:

  • be housed in an interior room
  • have access control on the door
  • have camera coverage of the door
  • have integration of systems (e.g., cameras, access control, gates) inside the room
  • have video analytics
  • have dynamic presentation of alarms
  • be manned by security personnel
  • have the ability to remotely control gates, doors, etc.
  • have the ability to relay information to responding agencies
  • put the campus/building on lockdown
  • initiate mass notification

Because a proper security operations console could be a large undertaking for an organization that doesn’t already have most (or some) of the above points in place, decision makers sometimes shy away from deciding to install one. With that said, new technology means that a physical room with equipment and personnel isn’t strictly necessary anymore.

With a cellphone and a web-based login, it’s possible these days to hit most of the salient points of a security operations console without the physical location of one. Systems integration, video analytics, dynamic presentation of alarms, remote control of gates and other entrances, contact with responding agencies, and initiation of lockdown and mass notification can all be achieved with a mobile operations center.

Don’t let the price tag overwhelm you when it comes to a security operations console. There are multiple options on the market for all types of organizations and their needs.

School Safety

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A recent article by the Associated Press had some good points about selling security equipment to schools. “Many proponents of hardening a school like an airport or police station have backgrounds in law enforcement or the military. Some have little experience or qualification.” One person interviewed for the story had sold $500,000 worth of security equipment to a school to later say (after he was no longer selling security equipment) that the same school could have paid a fifth of the price for the same level of security upgrades.

Listen, technology and gadgetry are not going to solve all of your security problems. Here at Invictus Consulting we believe that your school’s culture of safety can go a long way toward protecting your faculty, students, and staff. Having an emergency action plan that your faculty and staff have been trained on is such an important part of school security. We believe that security plans for intelligent threats should be as commonplace as fire evacuation plans – everyone should know what to do in case of an emergency, everyone will have practiced what to do, and lives will be saved because of prior planning and training.

Beyond an emergency action plan, a culture of security means that faculty, students, and staff have been trained to keep all exterior doors locked and closed; children do not open doors for strangers (even though this goes against a polite culture in parts of the country); parents and other visitors are aware that they need a reason for their visit; visitors have their identification checked against offender databases; visitors are escorted while they’re on campus; and a record is created for each instance of a visitor on campus (i.e., there is a record of exactly who is on campus, when they were there, how long they were there, when they left, who they came to see, etc.).

There are 5 layers of security on any property: outer perimeter, visual perimeter, access control, alarms, and policies and procedures. Your emergency action plan and culture of security would be considered the innermost layer of security – your policies and procedures.

But the other four layers of security are also places where schools can implement cost-effective solutions that improve the security of their people. Lots of schools we assess actually already have some measures in place – fences, gates, cameras, intercom systems, burglar alarms. It’s just that a lot of these systems are mismanaged or not used effectively or to their fullest capabilities. Before you upgrade to a half-million dollar security system, look at your current security measures and see if things can be managed better (e.g., fix broken fences, learn how to use video analytics in your camera system) or used more effectively.

We absolutely believe in the efficacy of physical and electronic security measures. Card readers, cameras, door prop alarms, systems integration – these are all effective and important aspects of security. But don’t mistake expensive equipment for a cure-all to security issues.

Guest Post on Wildfire Safety

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Thanks to Oliver at disastersafety.info for a guest post today.

I know hurricanes are making a lot of headlines lately (and for good reason), but in a lot of areas of the country, the weather is dry and prone to wildfires. Since there seems to be an abundance of information being spread on hurricane and flood safety right now, I wanted to take a few minutes and share some important wildfire safety information.

The Ultimate Guide to Wildfire Safety
https://www.homeadvisor.com/r/wildfire-facts-and-safety/

Prepare for Wildfire – Pack a To-Go Bag
https://www.unce.unr.edu/blogs/livingwithfire/2018/07/26/prepare-for-wildfire-pack-a-to-go-bag/

Disaster Preparedness for Pets
https://www.freshfromflorida.com/content/download/11447/144978/Disaster%20Preparedness%20for%20Pets.pdf

Tips for preventing wildfires for farmers
https://www.dakotafarmer.com/safety/tips-preventing-wildfires

Prevention, Protection, and Evacuation: Fire Safety for Farm and Livestock Owners
https://www.redfin.com/blog/fire-safety-for-farm-and-livestock-owners

What YOU Can Do While Traveling to Wildfire Regions
https://www.travelingmom.com/travel-tips/wildfire-safety-tips/

Helping Children After a Wildfire: Tips for Parents and Teachers
https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources/school-safety-and-crisis/natural-disaster/helping-children-after-a-wildfire-tips-for-parents-and-teachers

How to Recover From A Wildfire
https://aerindustries.com/guide-to-wildfire-damage-recovery/

 

 

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Budgeting for a Director of Security

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We’ve recently talked about budgeting for security and what to expect from a security director here on the Invictus Consulting blog. Today I want to direct your attention to a recent report in Campus Safety Magazine about salary and benefits for campus protection professionals (i.e., campus police officers, chiefs of security, directors of security, nonsworn officers)  from K-12 schools, universities, and hospitals.

Some takeaways from the report:

  • $77,500 is the median annual pay rate for campus deputy police chiefs, associate security directors, and directors of emergency management
  • Pay ranges from $30,000 to $150,000 for directors of security
  • The pay rate has increased in the past 5 years
  • Different regions of the country have quite different ranges in pay – those in the west earn more than their counterparts in other parts of the country
  • Minorities and women are making gains, albeit small ones, in representation
  • Only a third of officers carry a weapon (and only a tenth of women officers are armed)
  • Larger campus size generally equates to a larger salary for a director of security
  • Departments with 51-75 employees tend to have the highest pay for a director of security
  • Understaffing is a concern in the majority of organizations surveyed

Statistics and surveys/polls can be boring, we get it. But if your organization is looking to hire a Director of Security, or hire an off duty police officer, or you’re just getting started thinking about adding money to the budget for security personnel, a report like the one from Campus Safety Magazine is an invaluable place to start.

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The Coming Storm – An FBI Production

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Back in 2015 the FBI created a training video for law enforcement personnel. The video depicts a (staged) active shooter event including pre-attack warning signs (a video made by the shooter), scenes of the event itself, scenes of first responders responding to the events, scenes of other players such as parents, and post-event fallout such as student reactions and media relations. The second half of the video is a discussion of lessons learned after recent active shooter events – what’s most important is that this part of the video is not staged, these are actual law enforcement executives who lived through the various events and are able to legitimately discuss the event and lessons learned.

The intended audience for the video originally was law enforcement, first responders, and FBI agents. The video was originally released only to law enforcement and first responders, but it is now available in full on YouTube. While the active shooter event is staged (and “softened” a bit), the actions of the responders, the fallout after the event, and the lessons learned are all valuable tools. We recommend watching this video, even if your role is not specifically security-related – everyone can learn from the video, and it’s a great starter for a discussion about security at your place of employment.

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