Save a Life. Read This Blog.

Posted on by itinitiatives

The value of your facility isn’t in its steel, wood, or sheetrock. It’s in how well it serves your people and your organization.

Unfortunately, as the world becomes a more dangerous place, “serving” increasingly means “protecting.” So you’re under more pressure than ever to:

  • Keep unauthorized people out of places they don’t belong.
  • Detect malicious intruders before they can do harm.
  • Prevent sick people from entering your facility.
  • Ensure that people maintain proper social distance.
  • Prevent people in your care from wandering off your grounds.

Failure to do any of the above can cost someone their life. Inadequate controls can also lead to injury, financial loss, downtime, legal exposure, and irreparable damage to your company’s reputation. You must therefore take aggressive steps now to mitigate a growing range of risks.

You can’t possibly hire enough human security to fully mitigate those risks. Even if you could, you’d wind up creating a police-state atmosphere that’s not conducive to quality work, quality learning, quality healthcare, or quality worship.

But there’s good news. New advances in video, audio, and temperature surveillance now empower you to cost-effectively monitor and respond to just about any situation you could imagine. So you can dramatically reduce risk without impinging on the practicality or esthetics of your space.

How it works

The technology that’s revolutionizing mitigation of facilities-related risk is built on three pillars:

Pillar #1: Digital monitoring. You probably associate video surveillance with low-resolution images on closed-circuit cameras watched by security staff in a security station. State-of-the-art surveillance is quite different. Video signals produced by today’s devices are both ultra-high-definition and digital. Audio, thermal, and motion monitoring is now digital, too. This digitization delivers two breakthrough advantages: 1) security staff can now maintain vigilance on their mobile devices even as they patrol your facilities, and 2) video, audio, and other inputs have now been transformed into digital data that can be processed by advanced analytics software.

Pillar #2: Analytics, recognition, and alerting. Analytics software can interpret images, movements, and sounds in all kinds of useful ways. Software can recognize faces and vehicles. It can determine someone’s age, health, and gender based on their body shape and gait. It can detect anomalies such as someone carrying an unusual object that might be a firearm or other weapon. It can identify a gunshot or a cry for help.

Analytics software can also interpret data input in the context of time and other variables—so it “knows” the difference between 2:00 PM on a Wednesday and 2:00 AM on a Sunday.

Just as important, software can instantly alert your security staff when something amiss occurs—and, if you choose, even take automatic actions such as locking doors, setting off alarms, and notifying first responders.

Pillar #3: Expert configuration. Sophisticated technology requires sophisticated implementation skills. For one thing, you need to ensure proper coverage of your interior and exterior spaces. For another, you need to configure your software so it’s sensitive enough to readily detect problems while not being so sensitive that it generates too many false positives. You also need to ensure that the technology you deploy precisely and efficiently addresses the specific risks of greatest concern to your individual organization.

Don’t just read. Act.

Thanks for taking time to read this blog. I encourage you to act on what you’ve just read. Organizations that invest in 21st Century technology to address their growing 21st Century “risk surfaces”—including security, safety, legal, and regulatory exposures—will make it through the coming years far more successfully than those that passively allow themselves to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Plus, if you implement the right technology, you may be able to reduce your insurance costs considerably.

I’d love to talk to you about your risk mitigation challenges and goals. So feel free to start a conversation by clicking the button below, contacting me by email, or giving me a call. The life you save may even be your own!