In today's world, modern-day enterprises have to place a strong emphasis on leveraging intelligence to drive operations. Various organizations worldwide, such as airports, retail establishments, safe cities, and government agencies, are looking to solve the same challenge: identify what risks are around the corner and mitigate them efficiently. From people, to property, to brand, the risks faced by businesses continue to shift, which also means they need security solutions to evolve and help mitigate these concerns for the safety and success of their organization. It’s no secret that COVID-19 has placed an increased load on corporate security programs with newly distributed workforces. 

While security is always a top priority due to inherent risks, such as theft and workplace violence, long gone are the days of this function being a company's only concern. The emphasis on cybersecurity is on the rise, with forecasts estimating that cyberattacks will cost $6 trillion this year (this stat is from before some significant breaches occurred including the Colonial Pipeline).

This fact increases the need for video surveillance, physical security, intelligence, and cybersecurity solutions to come together to provide holistic, actionable intelligence for mission-critical organizations. 

Intelligent Operations

Businesses looking to adopt a more proactive approach to enterprise risk management must shift toward more automation and stronger resource allocation.  But in the security world, this can be a difficult concept to embrace. More often than not, devices and systems don’t talk to each other. A camera system may not communicate to the access control system; the intrusion systems may be standalone; and then there may be disparate cameras, access control, and intrusion systems deployed at facilities around the world. Now layer in the complexities around intelligence, situational awareness, social media, employee travel (once that starts again), and all the new security responsibilities with “return to work” programs and the amount of data has never been higher.

How can an organization build an effective global program with siloed systems? In the past, the options were limited: a large capital project to rip and replace or buy a physical security information management system (PSIM). Both options were expensive, complex to deploy, and time consuming to manage.

But today, stakeholders can leverage advanced technologies, like sensor fusion platforms, to combine data from a company's disparate monitoring systems and security sensors to give operators a single-pane-of-glass to evaluate and respond to alerts. By centralizing data, security program noise is reduced and only events that require a human response are elevated. Automation helps maximize staffing and time, freeing up individuals to focus on the things that truly matter, and not vast amounts of false alerts. Technology will never completely replace the needs for humans in physical security, but it can certainly optimize them.

Why is this an important concept to understand? This approach is a solution to address the data problem. Data derived from both internal and external systems and activities play an essential role in achieving a strong security posture. Still, in today's business environment, the amount of data far outweighs the ability of many organizations to organize what's collected and make it intelligent. This inability to determine what is valuable and what's not limits the ability to make rapid, informed decisions.

By aggregating data from multiple systems onto a single interface, security operators can assess threats across an organization and its infrastructure. This approach also empowers leaders to continuously monitor and investigate cyber and physical hazards, leveraging overarching threat intelligence to unfold attacks in the making and using a proactive defense approach to prepare enterprises for new threat scenarios. 

But that's not where the challenge ends. After collecting data, enterprise security leaders must correlate it with other sources and share it with the right stakeholders so that the appropriate response can occur quickly and efficiently. But by deploying technologies that unify data into one pane of glass, there is a more substantial opportunity to realize a predictive threat model. Furthermore, when security components — IT, physical, and cyber — correlate, businesses can increase operational efficiency. 

Enterprises can improve incident response times and be more proactive with their security programs by utilizing this approach. Combining technology, domain expertise, and intelligence can assist in protecting multiple entities simultaneously and improve threat intelligence.