EDIT Edge PSI Mar22_PSI_mar15 28/02/2022 16:02 Page 2
SECURITY
Security starts at the edge As more and more devices are being added to your customers’ networks, many of which need to be ‘always-on’ so how can you ensure security? n the era of digital transformation, security installers are required to consider a range of aspects. An installer can overcome challenges in managing security management systems for secure buildings, asset protection, personnel tracking and analytics of critical security data with an approach that centres on resilience. Whether it is the complicated access control of a government facility, new health-screening devices for a retail space or an advanced systems protecting high-cost assets; installers can bring resilience to their offering through edge computing.
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Why edge computing? According to Duncan Cooke, Business Development, Stratus Technologies: “No matter what functionality an installer is seeking, whether that is integrating software and hardware into a central management platform, or keeping critical assets always-on, an edge computing platform offers unparalleled flexibility and inherent resilience.” As a result of the pandemic some security systems have had new devices added to the new infrastructure. Devices, for example, that can perform temperature checks, additional
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cameras to monitor movement within a site, two-factor authentication for critical areas, and perhaps even extra backup systems in case of power failures to ensure recording reliability. The addition of such devices can place extra strain on security systems and of course this means there’s also a need to manage more data. Large enterprise security systems collect data from all these devices and the associated control software, and then get to work with facial recognition, managing climate controls, recording data, switching power sources and the like. So, what happens if this critical control layer goes down? “If your system is protecting high-cost equipment or critical infrastructure controls, it might only take a few seconds of downtime for hackers to access valuable data or create unsafe working conditions,” says Duncan. “The traditional solution to this issue was fail-over, whereby if one server fails a second takes its place by activating a physical or virtual standby server, recreating the previous environment, and then resuming operations. This approach requires a failure to trigger the recovery, so in that scenario there is always a finite amount of downtime and a gap in recorded data. Such
The addition of new devices can place extra strain on security systems and of course this means there’s also a need to manage more data
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