The detection challenge of having full situational awareness is more difficult than ever, writes Curtis Walters, VP Commercial Critical Infrastructure Sales of Echodyne.
For decades, security programs have evaluated cameras, access control systems and perimeter sensors as independent technologies.
Cameras were rated on their resolution, access control systems on how well they managed entry and exit through doors and perimeter sensors for the quality of their alerts. That model is breaking down.
As facilities face growing threats from drones, expansive perimeters and limited staffing, the challenge to have full situational awareness is more difficult than ever.
And while the quality of different technologies included in any security stack is still crucial, all these layers sit downstream of detection, spotting potential threats at a point when there is insufficient time to assess the situation and act.
It’s no longer enough to have all the different layers working in silos and stretched security teams are becoming increasingly dependent on automated detection, classification and tracking systems to determine what deserves attention and response.
Today, the effectiveness of the detection layer is directly proportional to the effectiveness of the entire security system.
New threats are reshaping the security perimeter. For example, the proliferation of drones over the last decade has expanded the need to patrol past the fence and has turned the security landscape from 2D to 3D.
Harder-to-monitor environments create more unknowns than security teams can manually address.
Even the most pristine resolution on a camera doesn’t allow an operator to see a threat, classify whether it’s a serious problem and continue to track it, especially at long-range or in adverse weather conditions.
The detection layer helps tip off security teams to incoming threats, acting as a “catch-all”, round-the-clock observer that sees well beyond the line of visual human sight or cameras.
The difference between depending on a security operator to manually manage all threats and augmenting their capabilities with automated detection is the difference between dangers slipping through the cracks and saving the day.
Going a step further, not all detection layers are created equally. The mark of a highly effective detection layer is its classification capability.
That is, after it detects the threat, can it tell you what it is? To put this into a real-world example, consider the security program rolled out for the recent World Cup.
This event was highly distributed across three nations, countless fan zones, packed stadiums and dense, urban environments.
The security teams and law enforcement agencies tasked to protect these sites could not have depended solely on their eyes and ears to make judgement calls about threats in, around and above these sites.
If an unauthorized drone was approaching a stadium, spotting it on a camera, once it’s only a few hundred feet away or already hovering above fans, would have given them zero time to act, understand intention and pull together a proper response.
In a situation like this, a security leader wouldn’t want to rely on just a camera visual to see if there’s a payload attached to said drone.
Instead, the best scenario is for the detection layer to have spotted it well before it reached close to the perimeter, and provided them with the intel on its make, model, what it’s carrying and its potential for harm.
They’d also want that detection layer to be smart enough to not inadvertently classify the object as a drone, when it’s really just a bird or airspace clutter.
The foundational sensor powering this detection capability is high-performance radar, which enables more effective use of cameras, analytics and command-and-control (C2) platforms by providing persistent tracking, reliable cueing and early threat awareness.
It’s important to note that radar doesn’t act alone but instead fuses with all the other layers to take a security system from a passive actor to an active one.
When it comes to assessing a security system, the conversation has shifted permanently. Individual device specifications are taking a backseat to the operational performance of the system as a whole.
This is especially true when it comes to the system’s ability to leverage automated detection, tracking and classification of threats, well before they become a problem that makes headlines.
Security leaders shouldn’t settle for systems that don’t reduce their operational burden and workload.
Instead, they should be able to depend on a detection layer that tells them when and what matters most, so their job performance isn’t contingent on how well they can manage chaos, but rather on how effective their system is in providing them the right intelligence and situational awareness to make critical decisions.
This article was originally published in the September edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.