iLegal 2014 took place in August this year and was pronounced a success by all the attendees as well as the presenters. This year the conference once again looked at the legal responsibilities in meeting technical challenges, specifically but not exclusively focusing on realising the potential of CCTV.
As always, iLegal sported a sterling line-up of speakers, from one of the legal eagles involved in the formulation of the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act, through to the manager of a successful safe city project and a forensic security expert from a mine who used Six Sigma principles to optimise the organisation’s surveillance.
Gus Brecher
Gus Brecher, MD of Cathexis Technologies followed, addressing the topic of integration and how integrating your security technology delivers value to security and other areas of the organisation. He noted that it is a common occurrence for security professionals to have to deal with budgets that don’t cover all the security solutions they need, forcing them to compromise in some areas.
Brecher defines integration as being able to receive information from multiple systems and make automated, informed decisions based on the data collected. By extending the scope of your security systems to collect and analyse this information, your budget can be boosted with funds from other areas of the business, which will pay for the information they can get out of it because it benefits them and assist them in reaching their goals.
An example is the integration of intruder and fence alarm systems. Instead of having people monitoring perimeters via cameras or guard patrols, intelligent systems will know where an alarm is and automatically bring the right camera up in the control room so that the correct, effective action can be taken. This leads to increased efficiency and accuracy of the company’s operations and an increased return on investment (ROI).
A similar result is obtainable when integrating access control and time & attendance, shrinkage control at retail POS points, people counting, queue management and heat maps in retail (using the organisation’s security cameras to automatically provide this information as well as normal security functions), as well as in logistics and plant management functions and more.
Brecher’s message was that security systems can be used to deliver a measurable return to different areas within a company if they are implemented correctly and integrated to allow for a single information store that can be analysed and mined. ROI results when data is intelligently analysed to deliver business intelligence that adds value.
