Bridging The Gap: Driving New Levels Of Intelligence And Risk Mitigation

By Kevin Wine, Vice President Marketing Americas, Video & Situation Intelligence Solutions, Verint Systems Inc.

Today, security and risk are large business issues, reaching high into the C-suite. Executive leadership teams recognize the potential of costly and damaging disruptions if risk is not appropriately controlled. As a result, IT, physical, and cyber security teams must collaborate to best manage and address risk.

It is obvious the lines between various once-siloed departments are blurring. A dialogue between IT and physical security leaders is necessary to help today’s business leaders gain a greater knowledge of how to collaborate to ensure data protection. Industry leaders must communicate with multiple departments to identify vulnerabilities and work collaboratively to address these challenges. The result of these conversations: a truly comprehensive approach to security intelligence.

Once multi-department collaboration is outlined, there are myriad risks to address and discuss. What catches the attention of risk and security leaders within organizations? Here we take a closer look at some of the issues facing today's organizations.

• Globalization. Large enterprises have locations around the world, as well as remote and traveling employees, which lead to a wider variety of threats. To maintain a high level of security and ensure business continuity around the globe, companies need ways to predict and respond to threats, such as crime, severe weather, terrorist activity, travel delays, and more — all in real time.
• Connected services. Over the last 10 to 15 years, the world has seen a shift in how society connects, with an emphasis on the Internet of Things and a demand for more mobile capabilities. These trends allow businesses to translate these capabilities to more streamlined operations, especially those that are tasked with managing large infrastructures. But as the need to stay connected increases, so too does the need for increased security for physical assets, networks, and stored data.
• Sophisticated networks. Modern criminals are increasingly sophisticated in their tactics. IT and physical security leaders must contend with high-tech schemes and, in some cases, globally organized crime. This higher level of risk pushes businesses to tackle security in a more cohesive way, with input from various departments within the organization. Now, more than ever, executive leaders are concerned about how risk impacts the entire organization, the customer experience, and the company's brand.
• Collaboration. Information-sharing with other businesses, governing bodies, law enforcement, and even regulatory agencies is encouraged in today’s data-driven environment. Improved information sharing delivers a wide variety of benefits. Collaboration is critical as lack of awareness leads to greater exposure to threats. With increasing data breaches, as well as insider threats, addressing the evolving security landscape of modern threats takes the knowledge of all involved.
• Integrated solutions. Open systems allow users to access real-time information from multiple sources, which helps empower security officials and employees to make quick decisions that help improve safety. Following an incident, operators can export video data, transaction records, and other vital information to aid in a faster, more effective investigation. At the same time, an ongoing information exchange with regulatory agencies helps ensure compliance.

These factors all play a significant role in propelling the idea of security from situation management to comprehensive risk intelligence. To achieve this level of security and business knowledge, organizations around the globe are adopting situational awareness technology to tie disparate systems into one cohesive platform.

By leveraging advanced surveillance, analytics, and investigation tools, businesses can better detect and respond to incidents. By bringing multiple processes, strategies, and systems together and managing them from a single security operations center, organizations can more effectively identify threats, develop trends and quickly access important data to ensure threats are identified and responded to quickly and efficiently.