Physical security information management (PSIM) has a bit of a reputation. Many of its critics say that it’s overly expensive and time-consuming to set up, and that they don’t really know what it’s for.
This reputation is in part deserved and in part extremely shortsighted. The system is very well suited for an incredibly complex level of customisation, preceded by a detailed analysis of security, fire, and building management systems. A PSIM vendor is several times more than just a solution provider, and by this measure, it is a long-term partner in your organisation’s security.
But PSIM vendors could also be significantly more hands off, according to James Whybrow, European regional sales director for VidSys. “Our latest 7.5 release of VidSys PSIM is 100% commercial off the shelf, and during a typical deployment, customers can expect an 80-20 split,” Whybrow told me at the recent Transport Security Expo in London. He means that 80% of the project uses the out-of-the-box product capabilities, while the customer configures the remaining 20% to meet its specific needs after looking at what technology it has to integrate, what actions a system user must take in an emergency, etc.
Busting the myth of complexity
A PSIM system could be called a business enabler. Under a traditional model, SMS platforms or other PSIM platforms display alarms from different subsystems in an unstructured manner. Security officers must assess the risk and priority for themselves. For example, security officers might see an intruder or a fire alarm on their system. Once they have decided where the alarm physically was, they might despatch a staff member to that location, find it on video surveillance, or both.
The beauty of a PSIM system is that security officers can do all these things from a single interface, whilst the system provides the officers with a dynamic, step-by-step process to bring a situation to a resolution in line with corporate procedures and policies. The interactions an operator makes don’t have to change. They can be streamlined and deliver the right information to the operator for real-time situational awareness.
VidSys says it is “busting the myth of expensive complexity” in PSIM. As a result of its approach, it can deploy a solution much quicker than some of its rivals, such as CNL, NICE Systems, and VERINT. VidSys is achieving this through a variety of approaches, including the efficient use of a commercial off-the-shelf platform for rapid deployment, highly configurable graphical user interface for administration, and reuse of a significant proportion of the system rules and correlation engine. The quickest it has set a PSIM integration up is one week.
Education
It’s been several years since the acronym PSIM began to gain traction in the industry, but it has since been dogged with misunderstanding. Do people know what it is now in general? Whybrow said:
In some markets and regions, PSIM is less well known. However, VidSys have provided significant investment educating key focus markets. In those markets VidSys, and indeed PSIM, is becoming an accepted part of consultants’ and end users’ design briefs and budgeting. As we expand into new vertical markets and regions, education still forms part of [the] ongoing strategy.
The idea of situational awareness is universal, and that is what PSIM enables — a complete overview of the situation in an organisation’s facilities.
VidSys operates across a board spectrum of markets covering everything from public to private organisations. Its key areas of focus are large corporates, critical national infrastructure, and public space surveillance. In that last category, PSIM enables a city or public authority to integrate multiple video surveillance systems easily — Whybrow calls PSIM the glue that holds these systems together. Though the UK’s public surveillance investment in PSIM has been minimal (at best) in recent years, VidSys is seeing significant expansion in the US, Brazil, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
One VidSys client praised the fact that it was able to use the same number of security staff members to double the number of locations they monitored from 30 to 60. Another aimed to reduce its average alarm response time from six minutes to three, but it succeeded in reducing that time to just 1.5 minutes. The company has also been working with a major new port to the east of London designed to handle the latest generation of supercontainer ships — the type of project for which PSIM may be better known.
Is it time to say “no more” to the PSIM doubters, or do vendors still have work to do to prove the value of their systems? What do you think?
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in my books it does as education/knowledge is power and you could not put a price on the human life…but to educate someone it does cost time and money… but firesafety…is a knowledge.information – learning process…