Crowdsourcing Security
Resilient individuals taking security and fire safety into their own hands? This will be one of the biggest changes to security that will occur over the next five years. The security industry cannot rely on our technical innovation and expertise and assume that we will not be disrupted by consumer-led initiatives. Our roles will be transformed by disintermediation just as occurred in the travel industry, book publishing industry and product distribution.
We were easily able to dismiss the first consumer analog security cameras due to their poor quality and performance. At that point we were right, but this new technology is not so easy to dismiss. Consumer technology is rapidly changing in performance and quality, and now has an advantage over our traditional hierarchical security practices.
Crowdsourcing is not to be ignored, it deserves our full attention. The smartphone will soon be the security device of choice. While the smartphone may lack in certain areas, it is made up by its ubiquity, massive numbers and online reliability.
Two examples caught our attention this week. SOS-Response offers a free app that sends a burst round of 30 photos to first responders. This app is now available for IOS and Android phones. This technology allows a camera phone to turn into a mobile safety/security device that includes geo-location and time stamping. It provides first responders with real time data as an incident is being observed by a consumer.
An even more impressive initiative is Galileo robo-cam which provides a platform for safety and security applications. This device allows a user to remotely point an Iphone or camera in virtually any direction via mobile device such as the ipad. The irony of this new device is that the funding for […]
TRUSYS Goes To The Theatre
This post was drafted a few days before the latest university shooting incident in California. Unfortunately, it has become even more relevant.
Straying away from our usual blog posts we want to mention the play FrAcTured by Robinson Wilson playing at Vancouver’s Seacoast theatre. Seacoast Studios students experiment with this play depicting a one year anniversary meeting of 13 high-school students who survived a shooting. Crafted from research of over 200 school shootings the play reminds us as security and safety practitioners of the importance of our profession.
As the play progresses details of the shooting are revealed in a realistic scenario. The survivors describe the emotions they lived during the incident and they share the long term consequences of this event on their lives, their school and their community. Inevitably a number of social issues are raised like access to guns, faith, bullying and grief. The emotional cost for these young lives is unmeasurable.
For us as security practitioners, the play reminds us that what we do is important and noble. It goes far beyond the intellectual stimulation we get from devising elegant technical solutions. We are challenged to measure exactly what we deliver from a positive perspective – it is only when we look at the negative consequences of failing to protect our people that we get a glimpse of the value we deliver – yet the value of our work is extremely high.
This is a play that every CFO cutting security and safety resources needs to see.
This is a play that every parent or board member voting down security and safety budgets needs to see.