Page 55 - Security Today, April 2017

Being Bold Redefining the role of commercial security providers
BIy Tiffany Coles and Tori Martinez
nterface Security Systems (ISS) is a cloud-based managed security services provider. The company integrates net- work and security needs into one plat- form, with the goal of being a single-
vendor source for their customer’s needs. Through its Secure Managed Broadband Service, Interface provides a PCI compliant private network to connect POS systems, credit card authorizations, inventory, secu- rity, VoIP and WiFi. Interface also integrates intrusion detection, fire safety, access control and video surveillance to create one aggre- gate network for a more complete, secure and economical solution. The company’s ex- pertise spans many different business catego- ries including retail, restaurant, hospitality
and convenience stores.
Bundling Security
ISS’s unparalleled security services bundle is deployed by many of the top brands in the country, including Dollar General, Michael’s Craft Stores, Applebee’s and GameStop.
The company started as a small commer- cial security monitoring company in 1995. By 2001, it had grown to become one of the top 20 security companies in the country (based on industry rankings). In 2002, Inter- face began using the Manitou alarm moni- toring software from Bold Technologies to handle its alarm monitoring services.
Always thinking forward, the executive team at Interface identified an emerging trend, which was the convergence of internet protocol and information technology with security applications. The team recognized that “the combination of physical security (buildings) and logical security (network and computer technologies) would redefine the role of commercial security providers.”
In anticipation of this trend, Interface acquired Loss Prevention Management - a company that had developed a private, secure-managed, wide area broadband net- work. Interface integrated LPM’s IP infra- structure and network operations center into Interface’s secure operations center, which created a unified platform from which to de- liver IP-based physical security services over a PCI compliant, private secure managed broadband network.
Beginning with the acquisition of LPM, a service company that provisioned and managed wide-area networks for multi-site organizations, Interface’s vision to deliver a highly innovative IP services bundle with both physical security and logical security
created some unique challenges. A pillar of Interface’s secure operations center was the Manitou alarm monitoring platform.
Traditional physical security data (bur- glar, fire and open/closes) was managed through the Manitou platform and the In- terface team was confident in the Manitou solution; however, Interface was now man- aging various, non-traditional, products and services that were not monitored in Manitou. As part of the managed services bundle, In- terface was monitoring multiple functions of their broadband services including router status, primary circuit status, and VPN tun- nel status, among others.
“These services and devices were, at the time, being monitored by Help Desk repre- sentatives using separate tools and applica- tions open on multiple screens,” said Dan Reynolds, senior vice president of customer operations at Interface. “We had to stream- line the process to make it more efficient.” The Interface team knew from the start that the solution was to integrate these non- traditional signals into their Manitou alarm monitoring platform.
Addressing the Needs
The teams at Interface Security Systems and Bold Technologies worked together to find a solution to address ISS’s needs. Together, they determined that data from the different systems and devices must be interpreted by Manitou similar to traditional alarm events,
and processed using the Action Pattern func- tionality within Manitou. Action Patterns deliver step-by-step instructions on how to handle an alarm and ensure consistency. De- livering the data from multiple systems into Manitou would allow Interface to process all information through one system and provide detailed instructions to their dispatchers on how to manage each event. These discussions led to the development of Bold Technolo- gies’ UniversalConnector.
The UniversalConnector was designed to convert signals from non-traditional trans- missions into regular signals that are pro- cessed by Manitou. The UniversalConnector can take data from a variety of sources in- cluding SMS, email, ODBC database tables, FTP, TCP, GPRS, RSS, UDP and simple files. In the case of Interface’s broadband services, any “change of state” data was being stored on a MySQL database, so the UniversalConnector took the data from the appropriate ODBC database table and deliv- ered that data into Manitou.
The implementation of this solution was a matter of determining how the signals would be translated into Manitou. The software had to interpret the incoming data, whether it was a primary circuit status changing from up to down, or a network latency signal pre- senting as an email. The data needed to be presented in way so Manitou could decipher it and create an alarm event to be actioned. Bold’s development team found the solution
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