Redrawing the line of perimeter protection

The concept of creating a barrier or ring around an environment for safeguarding can be traced back to ancient civilizations, where they had to protect themselves from marauding armies or spies infiltrating their settlements. Today, organizations are facing ever-evolving threats from outside and within their boundaries from terrorism, state-sponsored cyber-attacks, industrial espionage, politically driven activism — the list goes on. What’s more, the tools at the disposal of bad actors are more powerful than ever, be it the use of spies, drones, social media or the Dark Web to coordinate protests and attacks.

Irrespective of the changing attack vectors, the problem faced by those responsible for protecting the perimeter and everything within it has changed little in thousands of years. How do protectors deter, detect and defeat highly motivated lone rangers, organized groups or unmanned attempts from penetrating and attacking? It is a question complicated further by the blurring of the lines between the physical and digital worlds. Organizations now have physical and virtual perimeters to defend, and attacks may not occur in isolation. Perhaps the bad guys want to gain access to the CCTV cameras, intruder alarms or access control systems, all of which reside on the IT network. 

The concept of erecting a form of virtual perimeter fence was adopted in the 1980s by those wanting to protect IT networks. They built firewalls and endpoint protection to keep the bad guys out. However, as cybersecurity threats evolved, so has the approach to protection and it is now the turn of the physical security industry to follow the lead of their cyber counterparts by adopting zero trust models. Put simply, this means adopting a default position that anyone could present a potential threat, whether they are ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of a designated perimeter. 

To make this work in the physical world requires organizations to embrace a more holistic approach. The good news is that transition is made easier by video management systems (VMS). 

In recent years, the VMS has evolved to be far more useful than managing the camera estate, as important as that is. Today, a VMS can be the central nervous system for the physical security operations of an organization, managing complex ecosystems that encompass a vast array of camera types and associated technologies, such as edge and server-based video analytics, as well as other core systems like access control, alarms, LiDAR and other sensors.

Using VMS as the hub for these powerful technologies creates the perfect environment for prevention, early detection (using alarm and sensor alerts, live monitoring and virtual patrols) and rapid response to perimeter breaches, regardless of where lines have been drawn. This can be augmented further with the use of incident management workflows (such as those within PSIM solutions) to give control room operators situational awareness at the perimeter and all points in between, coupled with necessary tools to make the right decision at the right time to coordinate the appropriate level of response that delivers a positive outcome. 

For example, if a movement sensor is triggered at a control zone, live feeds from the nearest cameras can be displayed on-screen. Footage can be replayed to determine the point at which the sensor was triggered and events leading up to it, at the same time persons or objects of interest can be located and tracked to determine where else they have been, what they did, and who they interacted with. At the same time, coordinated action can be taken, whether that is managing multi-agency resources dispatched to the scene, or simply making an audio warning.

Enabling those permitted to work, travel, consume and be entertained unimpeded inevitably requires a degree of trust. However, starting from a point of zero trust ultimately gives greater control over who comes in, who goes out and what they do in between, creating a safer, more secure and more productive environment.