13 Oct How command centres are responding to COVID-19 – an article brought to you by SureView
Security teams are adapting to new responsibilities and operational processes — technology can help
In recent months, I’ve had many different conversations with our customers about how the COVID pandemic has impacted their security operations—from global companies with hundreds of thousands of employees to much smaller organizations with control rooms responsible for local operations and campuses. The overwhelming feedback is that everyone has needed, in one way or another, to change their processes, and expect to continue having to do so for the foreseeable future.
For instance, one large customer was impacted by a member of their response team testing positive to the virus, causing an urgent requirement for all operators to work remotely. Another undertook a track-and-trace program, implementing a series of new policies and processes enforcing the response when employees reported positive. While a third implemented video analytics to detect fever at key building entry points, with positive alerts being sent to the command center to initiate the appropriate response.
Each of the examples highlights the varied ways teams are responding to this crisis. It’s all dependent on an organization’s priorities, location, conditions, rules, and mandates. The response can vary greatly, but there are six key focus areas that come up again and again.
Six key focus areas
We would never suggest that we understand all of the problems—they are developing and changing every day—or that our software can address every use case. What we can say with confidence is that we are seeing our software platform used very successfully to support organizations that need to respond quickly to make and enforce urgent operational changes.
The common focus areas for change are:
- The flexibility to run their operation remotely, so if a member of their staff tests positive or local ordinances force remote working they can do it seamlessly.
- The ability to create and enforce new policies on-the-fly—again no matter where their team is located.
- Maximising team collaboration—particularly when working apart, it is critical that everyone is on the same page and able to provide mutual support.
- Simple ways to take in alerts and video from a variety of different devices—there is nothing that gives better situational awareness than video and Ops can bring in all their cameras using open standards. Utilising the same standards approach, alerts from almost any device can be received. Today it may be fever detection alerts, tomorrow room occupancy limits.
- Managing risk, to ensure compliance and audit requirements don’t get lost in the shuffle.
- To take action today, they are looking for simple solutions their teams can pick up immediately and that deliver value. Importantly, no one has the luxury of elaborate projects that take months to implement or require large capital programs.
At SureView, for the last decade we have been developing our enterprise security response platform for very large global organisations (ie Fortune 500 companies). These organisations have tens-of-thousands of employees and hundreds of facilities worldwide. They have dedicated security teams deploying new systems on a daily basis.
But every organisation is impacted by this crisis. That’s why we developed SureView Operations (Ops), a flexible, hosted, cloud-based service, that allows organisations of any size to quickly deploy a system that can run their entire security operation from anywhere, support remote response, and build an agile SOC that has the flexibility to quickly respond to a variety of situations today and for years to come.
How do you implement this quickly? How do you ‘change the wheel on a moving car’?
Just like the response to COVID, moving your security operation to the cloud is not the same for everyone— different organisations have different priorities. It doesn’t matter where you start, what’s important is that you realise value quickly. We like to start projects by having one of our engineers work with you to develop a short, 30-day plan to ensure you achieve your immediate goals. We have affordable monthly user-based pricing and every account starts with a one-month free trial, eliminating the risk of trying something new.
Find out more about Sureview Operations at www.SureViewOps.com. We have organized the site to reflect those six key issues and provide greater detail, so it’s easy to see if Ops is a fit for your team. Alternatively, contact us at (888) 387-2860.
Sean Garcia – Dir. of Enterprise Command Centers
About SureView
SureView is an independent provider of software for security command centers. SureView Operations is a cloud-based subscription service available globally through AWS and built for rapid deployment.