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It has been five months since an elderly nun and two other senior protesters broke into the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and it seems nothing has been done to fix the perimeter fence that the protesters cut through to get on to the property.

The protesters allegedly cut through three fences and splashed blood on a building used to store bomb-grade uranium before they were arrested. Their trial is scheduled for May.

A photo of the 4.5-foot-high hole in the perimeter fence was published in the Knoxville, Tenn., News Sentinel last month. One of the protesters verified for the newspaper that the hole was his group’s initial entry point. National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Steven Wyatt told the newspaper that he could not comment on the hole because he hadn’t seen it or received verification it existed. He said that the perimeter fence is not a high-security area.

Since the July security breach, Y-12, once touted as the “Fort Knox of Uranium,” has been the focus of federal investigations and congressional hearings. The NNSA and contractors have come up a long list of improvements for the facility’s security. In October, Wyatt said concertina wire and other security upgrades were being added to Y-12 fences.

Two-hundred teachers in Utah turned out this week for free concealed carry gun-training sponsored by the Utah Shooting Sports Council. In previous years, the training course has had about 16 teachers show up. Utah allows those with concealed-carry permits to take guns on to school property.

Residents of Marlboro Township, N.J., have voted to allow armed guards in their schools.

In Arizona, the attorney general has proposed allowing any school to train and arm its principal or another staff member. In Tucson, a retired police officer has written to the governor volunteering to provide armed security to local schools at no charge. He noted that other retired officers throughout the state would be glad to do so as well. The Maricopa County sheriff says he’s got his “posse,” many of them armed, ready to stand guard outside schools there.

The list will grow, adding to the 23,000 U.S. schools that already employ armed guards, according to David Keene, president of the NRA, speaking on CNN.

What do you think? Good idea for protecting schoolchildren from another Sandy Hook tragedy, or not?

To better protect customers’ businesses, security professionals are entrusted to leverage new approaches and technologies to counter the latest threats. Yet many are hesitant to try emergent, less well-established solutions, instead favoring legacy methods and systems. By ignoring advancements, or at the very least putting them off, many security professionals are limiting themselves and their customers from reaping the benefits of current technologies.

They are also missing out on key opportunities to expand their service offerings and increase recurring monthly revenue through the adoption of cloud services and hosted software.

Aiming to align resources to maximize security, I thought it might be helpful to walk through a sample installation to show how easy and beneficial it can be to convert customers to a hosted video solution.

Standard needs
In this example, your customer is a modest, family-owned jewelry shop that has been in the local business community for 15 years. Until now, their security posture has primarily relied on a buzzed entry and thick bulletproof glass to fortify the shop. The bulletproof glass separates staff and merchandise from customers, enabling contact through transaction windows.

Three recent robberies in their strip mall have made the owners extremely concerned about their ability to secure the shop, and they have expressed a desire to improve security and upgrade to a contemporary surveillance system.

Your on-site survey reveals the following requirements: 1) the system must be easy to install and use without additional costs, equipment and maintenance; 2) they cannot afford significant software and hardware upgrades; 3) they want to monitor the shop after hours via remote video access. What do you recommend?

Solution found
This scenario seems ideal for a hosted video system. You recommend installing three networked cameras to capture video data, delivered to a 24/7 hosted video service.

Cameras: Using IP megapixel cameras, the deployment of an affordable and reliable hosted video surveillance solution is scalable, enabling new network cameras as the need arises. The network cameras stream live video with up to 1 megapixel resolution to a PC in the back of the store. During an event, users can activate an LED to illuminate the scene remotely, while using cameras to pan, tilt and zoom. Sensors on the camera provide motion detection, even in low light conditions.

Hosted Video: Combining the benefits of cloud storage technology, network attached storage and an integrated video management system, the HVSS enables your customer to access real-time and recorded surveillance video anytime and anywhere via a web-enabled device. The provider handles system maintenance and upgrades on the back-end, allowing for a full-featured, yet easy-to-use end-user system.

In the past, businesses have used elaborate and expensive DVR-based systems to store video data, but this model is showing its age in terms of cost, ease-of-use and technical capabilities. Savvy intruders know to find the DVR to destroy evidence.

External cloud-based storage platforms compare positively to DVRs and other internal storage platforms, allowing for backing up file copies in the cloud. The cloud-based hosted system eliminates the need for on-site DVRs, reducing security vulnerabilities with the video streamed and stored securely in an off-site data center.

An HVSS provides high performance, capacity and security, allowing the small business to recognize cost savings. A network attached storage device can work in tandem with the cloud storage service provider and IVMS, allowing users to record and store high-definition video locally while backing up a standard definition copy in the cloud for retention requirements and peace-of-mind.

Reducing the need for upfront capital investment, the HVSS’s small monthly operating expenses appeal to small businesses. As a hosted service, this model proves attractive to the integrator, offering RMR opportunities and further opportunities to entrench customer loyalty.

Security and confidence
Through a browser-based application, the owners have access to live video feeds from different areas of the store. The staff feels much safer with camera surveillance. When someone is working with a customer, other staff can keep an eye on them, simultaneously scanning other areas, too. The owners can log into the system to check on their business after hours.

Conclusion
By embracing today’s cloud-based tools and hosted service models, you can help your customers to more strategically align resources and maximize protection. Thanks to the affordability, ease of installation and management, a hosted video service is often the right solution for businesses of all sizes. Moving video surveillance data storage into hosted and cloud-based environments enables small business customers to recognize gains in efficiency, flexibility and scalability.

 Mike Nikzad is the chief operating officer of the Iomega Corporation, an EMC Company.  
 

My colleagues and I with school-age children received notifications from our respective schools to ensure us that our children were fine in the wake of Friday's horrific event in Newton, Conn.

Some were contacted by robocall, most by email. Some messages came in as early as Friday morning, before details were even made clear.

The messages spoke of the schools' precautions and emergency management drills already in place, how often their security policies are revisited.

Here in Maine, coincidentally, the state's School Emergency Planning Committee is meeting tomorrow to discuss proposed changes to its emergency management law. One proposal before the committee requires schools to conduct lockdown drills in addition to evacuation drills, which are already mandated.

There will be more school-to-parent communication to come, I'm sure, in the aftermath of Newtown. You can read what a school security expert has about it here.