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Adam Bannister is a contributor to IFSEC Global, having been in the role of Editor from 2014 through to November 2019. Adam also had stints as a journalist at cybersecurity publication, The Daily Swig, and as Managing Editor at Dynamis Online Media Group.
The Hatton Garden heist exposed flaws in an all-too-common approach to protecting high value assets, a key figure in Xtralis has claimed.
The Easter raid, in which a criminal gang audaciously tunnelled into a safe to empty 70 deposit boxes in the heart of London’s jewellery quarter, is still puzzling police who are yet to identify the culprits.
The vice president for security product line management at Xtralis – whose security systems purport to offer “very early and reliable detection, remote video verification, and rapid, effective response to smoke, gas and security threats” – says too many security operations are set up to record crime but not necessarily prevent it.
“Unfortunately we see this too often when proactive monitoring is not utilised,” says Yves Neuhaus.
“Some sites utilise video recording without alarming as their security strategy and it really only serves as evidence after the event occurs; it does not trigger an alarm that first responders can respond to so intervention can take place.”
Though CCTV cameras captured the raid as it unfolded, they didn’t appear to have been monitored externally. And when the alarm apparently alerted police on Good Friday, it was allegedly deemed to require no further response.
Surveillance footage revealed robbers disguised as workmen, wearing hard hats and high-visibility jackets. In a twist redolent of a Hollywood heist movie one of the thieves may have hidden inside the building on the Thursday as workers left for the long Easter holiday weekend.
False alarms
Neuhaus suggests that countless similar breaches are the result of human error directly attributable to flaws in the technology.
“A site that uses alarming without visual verification is vulnerable as well,” he says. “For a site that experiences a series of false alarms the end user may disarm the system eliminating any security protection to avoid nuisance alarms or first responders disregard the alarm deeming it false without visual verification.”
Neuhaus believes the raid is a wake-up call to anyone protecting vulnerable assets where crime detection is followed by sluggish or negligible verification and response.
“In these situations, a proactive security approach with reliable, visual verification and video transmission would have enabled a central monitoring station to verify the alarm and deploy the appropriate response quickly leading to intervention of the robbery in progress or apprehension of the suspects.”
Commenting in How the Hatton Garden Gang Resurrected the Bank Heist last month risk professional Nigel Stanley also suggested that “if the site had been storing footage in the cloud and was firing out video verification for the alarm signals it was generating I’m sure these criminals would have moved on to a softer target or they would have been disturbed in their act.”
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Hatton Garden Heist Highlights Need for Paradigm Change in Security Strategy, Says XtralisToo many security operations are set up to record crime but not necessarily prevent it, argues the company’s VP for security product line management.
Adam Bannister
IFSEC Insider | Security and Fire News and Resources
