Pictured is Simon Barnes of Genetec, business development director access control EMEA, on the company’s stand at the recent Security and Counter Terror Expo 2016, at London Olympia. He talked Professional Security through the latest from the IP security management product company.
Security Center, 5.4 is the latest version of the firm’s management software; featured in our March 2016 print issue. Simon talked about the ‘security of security’; that is, all devices protected across the network. , adding security and encryption to third-party devices managed through the software, ‘to see and control third-party devices a lot more openly’. As for access control, 5.4 offers integration with Suprema – the biometric access products from Entertech Systems – for face and fingerprint biometric use,using an IP-connected and conventionally-connected readers.
Genetec was also showing an Architect reader from the access control manufacturer STid, with a touch-screen display. A user can change the display controlled through the Genetec software, to add the user’s company graphics to the reader, As Simon said, that was reflecting that aesthetics (of the access control reader at an entrance) matter to the customer. Genetec will work with whatever reader that suits the customer, he added.
One application as shown on the stand was airports. Access control here could allow for the unlocking of doors for a set time, to allow people to board a ‘plane. The IP management software could work according to events, for example bringing up cameras to an operator, to show the boarding to the control room. When boarding is complete, the user can change the recording rate of the video surveillance to lower (not needing such detail of video when the corridor and door are without people). He mentioned the Twickenham rugby stadium, a user of Genetec for the 2015 Rugby World Cup, a case study featured in the April 2016 print issue of Professional Security. There stadium managers can change recording rates for cameras, and what directions they are looking at, according to the stadium’s standard operating procedures, depending on whether the site is busy on a match day or not. For the operator, the alert stature can be changed by the software, by changing the screen to a red border.
As for intercoms, Genetec is working with product manufacturers such as Castel, Zenitel, and Axis Communications.
If there is activity on a camera on the system, it can be presented as a ‘ping’, to let the operator know, without camera images having to be on the operator’s screen.
Also on show were a Microlatch keyfob, that offers biometric (fingerprint) access that works with a non-biometric reader, adding biometric security to a higher-security part of a building, for example; and a GoPro body-worn camera, to show that Genetec can integrate ‘body-wearables’, and synchronise recordings hours ago from body-cams with other fixed cameras.
SCTX next runs on May 3 and 4, 2017, at Olympia; visit http://www.counterterrorexpo.com/.
