Exploiting the prevalence, connectivity and processing power of the modern smartphone, such platforms are sadly indispensable given the growing global frequency of terror attacks and increasingly turbulent weather patterns widely attributed to climate change.
IFSEC Global spoke to Nick Hawkins, managing director EMEA at a provider of one such solution, Everbridge. The interview below covers deployments in the Boston Bombing and Westminster attack as well as where Everbridge sits in this burgeoning market.
IFSEC Global: Who are Everbridge and what do you do?
Nick Hawkins: Fundamentally we’re a software organisation that provides a critical communications platform that helps to keep people safe and keeps businesses running.
So if any organisation of any size wants to look after their staff, or when they have IT issues, they look to our platform to reach out to people to can deal with it and to reduce the downtime and [associated] costs.
Obviously time is of the essence [during emergency situations] and the whole idea of the platform is to reduce the time it takes for people to take actions
One of our largest clients is the State of Florida, home to 20 million people. We protect residents, businesses and visitors to the state when there are hurricanes, weather warnings… We were heavily used in the Boston Marathon attack back in 2013.
And a lot of organisations use the service to communicate with residents as well as organisations and employees to get them to safety [during emergencies]. Our platform is also used to bring in extra staff for hospitals and other governmental organisations.
Obviously time is of the essence [during emergency situations] and the whole idea of the platform is to reduce the time it takes for people to take actions – whether that’s protecting lives or, if business systems go down, the longer those systems aren’t up and running, the greater the impact and cost to that organisation.
We have about 3,500 clients. In the UK that includes eight of the top 10 commercial banks, several police forces, government organisations, enterprises… Really the platform goes across all verticals. It’s not platform-specific.
IG: I gather that Everbridge played a role in the Westminster attacks?
NH: Yes our platform was used by a few London hospitals and the metropolitan police as well as businesses across the capital who wanted to communicate with employees after the incident The emergency services did a great job, but the bigger picture is: how do you communicate to the public and community to keep them informed of what is happening?
I think the thing here is correct communications, and where do you rely on the communication. What we saw in the Boston bombing was that organisations used the platform to communicate not only to the blue light services, but to residents in the community too.
We also use multiple modes of communication, because you can’t rely on one form of communication such as SMS, voice or email, because one might be taken down
How do you communicate out to all those other people affected? And not just the emergency services and other people directly involved. How many other people were affected by the Westminster attack? Millions. There was a knock-on impact, with additional security and transport affected.
Another organisation called the Cross-Sector Security Communications platform used the Everbridge service as well. That’s predominantly run by the Met Police.
They used it to communicate to people outside those directly involved, to the wider community. It was very actively used.
IG: Is this a particularly competitive market? What is your USP?
NH: We differentiate ourselves with what we call critical event management. So it’s assessing the situation as to what’s happened – situational intelligence – locating individuals you want to communicate with, and automating the process so you reduce the time that it takes.
The key thing is getting the right message to the right person at the right time.
We also use multiple modes of communication, because you can’t rely on one form of communication such as SMS, voice or email, because one might be taken down. We saw this in the 7/7 bombings when the SMS network was brought down.
So a message goes out via one mode and if it doesn’t work then it just moves onto the next one. You don’t have to do anything; it’s automated.
We continuously analyse data to identify the best way of communicating, then feed that back in to the whole lifecycle of locate, automate and communicate
Analytics and big data is a huge area we’re investing in. We’re sending in the region of two billion messages a year. And people are now saying: “You sent all these messages – what analytics do you undertake with the results?
So we continuously analyse the data to identify the best way of communicating, what’s the best message to communicate, then feed that back in to the whole lifecycle of what I talked about: assess, locate, automate and then communicate.
If you have better analytics and big data feeding into that, you’re going to be a lot more knowledgeable about how to assess the situation and communicate. It’s a lifecycle, a 360 view of a situation.
IG: Does your platform get used in training exercises undertaken by emergency services?
NH: Absolutely. If you don’t undertake training and planning, then when these incidents happen you can be caught short.
And we can have all these plans because we’re all mobile today. We have the ability to do it all on the fly.
IG: Thanks, Nick. Is there anything else you would like to add?
NH: The police force and emergency services are only so many people. If you expand that out to the community you’ve got a much bigger group of people who can assist you, the police and everyone else.
We’re seeing a lot more incidents, particularly in America, where the public are actually assisting with some of this process through two way communication.
In Windsor, where our office is, they brought in hostile-vehicle mitigation systems as a result of the Westminster attack. They did it overnight. But there’s only so much the authorities can do.
And I think one of the key things we do well is that we do take on new processes and procedures after events and listen to the feedback we get from our customers to improve our services
