The enterprise market is made up of organizations in many shapes and sizes, but they all share a common set of challenges as security shifts from being its own siloed department to becoming a C-suite level agenda item, writes Simon Morgan, pictured, Chief Technology Officer, SureView Systems. They make the Immix software platform as used by central stations.
Business continuity and risk management demands that the scope of security be widened beyond just premises security, to that of the entire business, and security professionals are at the forefront of this shift.
Primarily, these enterprise organisations are thought of as profit-making commercial businesses and while true, cities, counties, universities and healthcare facilities also face many of the security challenges of enterprises, including widely distributed facilities across geographic boundaries – even globally – that need to be linked together; disparate systems that require integration into a single, consolidated operations solution; completely distributed network topologies; and a number of smaller security operations centres in place.
As security professionals, managers and directors examine ways to address all of these challenges, they seek a product solution that consolidates operations, provides greater situational awareness, has enforceable standard operating procedures, provides reliable reporting capabilities and allows for more efficient security operations overall. Above all, the solution must provide a clear return on investment (ROI) for all capital expenditures, which is central to delivering in the enterprise market. ROI in this case is driven by the speed of deployment and a low cost of ownership, including ongoing maintenance and support.
Meeting needs
Designing a platform that meets these characteristics can present a unique challenge for security software designers. Traditionally, physical security information management (PSIM) systems have been designed to meet the needs of many critical infrastructure sector clients by using a client/server system design. However, this architecture is less successful in addressing the needs of the enterprise customer, where a cloud-based architecture better fits the operational, networking and IT strategies already in place.
Designing and deploying a modern PSIM system is a costly and constantly evolving process. The system must integrate with a wide variety of different subsystems and provide centralised situational awareness for the security professionals responsible for co-ordinating a response to any perceived threat. To that end, the basic architecture of PSIM software for the enterprise is crucial to understanding how this solution addresses the needs of the enterprise customer and how this architecture can heavily influence the successful deployment and operational success of the system.
Architecture
Since the architecture of PSIM software for the enterprise market creates the basis for the eventual success of the system, these principles of design must be present in the system’s basic DNA from inception. PSIM software for the enterprise is built using a lot of the same characteristics that can be found in other products in the security marketplace, and other enterprise-grade cloud solutions ranging from Google Apps for business, Microsoft Office 365 and Azure, to name a few. PSIM software for the enterprise, therefore, follows some basic guidelines that are critical for meeting the challenges of enterprise organisations and achieving ROI.
•Scalability. This is the ability of the application to grow and adapt to the needs of customers whether they are large or small. In the world of enterprise applications, this means the system must provide redundancy to protect from system failures, as well as the ability to extend capability as growth demands. Designed to run in the cloud, PSIM software for the enterprise is built on a database structure that supports a multi-tenant framework, providing the flexibility for separate divisions/groups within an organisation to run their own independent system, while still leveraging the common server infrastructure of the main platform.
•Extensibility. Beyond the server room, the next focus is on designing a system that is extensible, allowing customers to expand and customise the use of their system as they grow. Extensibility allows customers to begin with a pilot deployment and later develop a plan to roll out the system across a large, widely distributed organisation. It also supports a range of different systems that go beyond physical security systems, including situational awareness platforms. Additionally, this critical design element offers customisation of the system without creating a once-off version, which is expensive to maintain and support.
•Agility. When one thinks of agility, it creates an image of a system that is quick and easy to deploy, maintain and adapt. To achieve these goals, the obvious choice is to develop a completely Web-based system, which eliminates high IT cost to deploy and maintain client systems, especially in complex organisations. These systems allow for the centralised management of all updates. As new features, functions and integrations are added to the system, all users, no matter where they are located, have access to the latest version. Additionally, by standardising everything to the Web, the management of the system is simplified and provides another level of flexibility in controlling access to the system. This wider adoption and easy access to the system becomes critical when co-ordinating the response to an event or managing a crisis.
•Operational Elegance. It’s important that PSIM software for the enterprise be operationally easy to use and maintain, meeting two goals in the process: simple to use and roles-based. For the system to be simple to use, any user can log in and begin using the system with a minimal amount of training. The roles-based method exposes only the information that is relevant to the user based on their job role – that is, the information presented to an operator is very different from that presented to a manager or law enforcement officer. Additionally, operational elegance goes beyond just a simple-to-use interface. It also embraces how the system interfaces with other systems and how complex tasks are automated to eliminate time-consuming manual operations.
Core of the enterprise
At its core, a PSIM software platform must still deliver the ability to integrate with a vast array of different systems and provide centralised situational awareness to customers. These central design principles for PSIM software for the enterprise make up the core foundation of the architecture for the enterprise product. To provide software to enterprise organisations, manufacturers cannot shoehorn new design needs into yesterday’s technology, but rather need to design applications from the outset to be flexible if they are to adapt to the ever-changing world of the enterprise organisation.
