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Security in Business
There was a time when all we needed to protect ourselves, was a key to the front door and a key to start the car. No more. Now we need a considerable arsenal of weapons to protect ourselves, our possessions and our privacy.
Quite simply, as technology advances, so does crime. While South Africa is rife with violent smash and grab offences, new levels in info and white-collar crime consistently threaten both the private person and the corporation. So while crime becomes more and more sophisticated, can we rest assured that security technology is keeping up? How safe are our businesses?
Fingerprinting has long been a powerful tool in forensic detection and it's now possible that it can be used for identification purposes in banks and other security situations.
"Fingerprint ID came in when it became necessary for businesses to verify a card-holder as a valid person", explains Keith Jacobs from Siltag. "For example - pension pay-outs; attendance and access to critical positions or locations in a building, like computer centres. "Where you need security for places out in the field - construction workers etc. - you find out they've got grubby hands and sometimes, because of the kind of manual labour that they do, their finger-print has rubbed away, so you have difficulty in identifying them. Then, hand recognition is much better, as it looks at the profile of the hand. It will look at the geometrical profile and store that as a record, so dirt and that kind of detail doesn't come into it."
"This was developed in America where they had problems with crowds and people", continues Keith, " especially in high security situations. It was always a problem trying to identify prospective gunmen or suspects in the crowd. So a few years ago, using a very powerful computer - a Cray - they began analysing the crowds, capturing all their pictures and images, storing them on this huge database and then using comparison to try and check whether the same people corresponded to known criminals." It seems that big brother is watching - more than we think - and with our permission. A more sophisticated form of facial recognition, maps the iris of the eye and identifies you in that way.
So while security has made advances in watching us, how is it watching our premises? A company called Instrumach has come up with a "stretch box", that can, via your cell phone, remotely alert you to the fact that there are intruders in your home.
Rory Mapstone from Instrumach explains: "What we've got is a security system based on a stretch box. The stretch box allows your home alarm system to speak to your phone. For example, if I were to open the door of the house and we have a sensor on that door, that sensor will inform the stretch unit that the door has been opened and then the stretch unit will send a text message to my cell phone. When I received that text message, I can then key in a response which may, for example, turn on a house light, or activate a smoke bomb, or something like that. So you can remotely respond to whatever's going on in your house." Now you can be informed when there's an intruder in your home. In the same vein, imagine if a similar technology could be used for your possessions, to tell you when they're being tampered with.
Keith Jacobs continues: "Electronic tagging is similar to the clothing systems that you've seen in shopping malls. This system won't go into alarm mode unless you move into that portal area, near the exit point. Now that has got a big disadvantage: if I can identify that security device before I go near the door, and quickly sneak it off or break it off or something, nobody is going to be any the wiser that I've actually stolen the item. So what we came up with about two years ago, was an active transmitter, that has movement sensors in it. It immediately wakes up and it says to the receiver unit, "I'm being moved". It's got a unique ID allowing us to identify the item. You can say ‘well, that's a laptop; that's a digital video camera', or whatever it is. You can then pre-alert guards or before it gets anywhere near the exit point." Telkom has also introduced technology that can forewarn about potential fraud. Peter Ross from Telkom shares on a system that they have developed: "If a person normally has a bill of about R200 a month and all of a sudden it's in excess of R2 000 or R5 000 a month, the system tells us about the increase in calls. It actually feeds that data automatically to an administrator. It's an IT based system, which has a renewal component that constantly profiles each user's line. From that we are able to determine exactly when and where the profile changes. As soon as that happens, it alerts the system, and we get our investigators as quickly as possible to see exactly what is happening on that line". But now that technology has been developed to help the user of high-tech equipment, can it also be applied to the average South African consumer? What about your taxi-riding consumer? Statistically, taxis, with all that cash on board, are the most at risk from crime. Well, new technology is afoot to combat this, by using phone cards to create a cashless taxi industry. Luc de Graeve from Nanotec explains: "The card that is used in this system is exactly the same as the Telcom pre-paid card, which of course, from a user point of view, makes it really easy. The user would go to a kiosk where he can get the Telcom pre-paid Smart Card and with this same card, he can either make phone calls, or catch a taxi. No longer does he need to carry a whole lot of cash with him, which of course provides him with added security". Whether you're trying to defend the industrial secrets of a multi-billion corporation or simply trying to take a taxi home, technology is being developed to allow you to do that in safety. The question ultimately is, "For how long will we stay just one step ahead?"
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We need an access control card for our office block, an office key, an alarm key, a computer access code, and that's before you even consider the security involved in your bank and information access, let alone having to deal with security in your home.
Let's look at the most basic principle of security - Access Control. You want to restrict access to certain areas of your life - your office, your home, your files and information and your financial and bank details. A pin-code cannot offer adequate protection and new technologies are being developed to increase security levels.
Your finger print is not your only identifying characteristic. Each person's face is as unique as the whorls on their finger-tips. State of the Art software has been developed in the USA that views a person's face and creates a unique algorithm, based on its measurements.
"Iris recognition is based on the fact that everybody's eyes are unique ", explains Machiel van der Harst from Sensar. "We've got six billion people in this world, which means we've got twelve billion different eyes. There are 266 different data points we can measure on an iris compared to a finger print, which goes to about thirty or forty. Every time you walk up to the ATM, or you present yourself in a bank, and this system will again take an image of your eye and compare it with the enrolment image. The system is very fast, once the enrolment is done, a verification or recognition will take more than two or three seconds."
