The international trade fair Security Essen planned for 22-25 September 2020 – Europe’s biggest security exhibition – is cancelled due to the unforeseeable developments of the Corona crisis.

The decision to cancel the fair was taken by Messe Essen in close consultation with the partner associations. The next Security Essen will take place at Messe Essen from September 20 to 23, 2022.

No other choice

Security Essen is a biennial event, taking place every two years.

“The anticipation of this year’s edition and the new concept of Security Essen was great among all those involved, and so all the more difficult for us to decide to cancel the fair”, explains Oliver P. Kuhrt, Managing Director of Messe Essen. “However, the current dynamic situation and the continuing global travel restrictions unfortunately do not permit serious preparations for the fair. As a result, our exhibitors and visitors and also we as the organisers lack the planning perspective which would have been a prerequisite for the customary professional staging of Security Essen this September.”

“The cancellation of Security Essen 2020 is the result of a prudent and careful evaluation of the current situation which we have undertaken together”, adds Norbert Schaaf, Chairman of the Management Board of the Federal Association of Safety Engineering (BHE) and Chairman of the Security Essen Advisory Board. “Since the majority of our fair participants come to Essen from abroad, we had to act with particular prudence. Due to the unclear worldwide development of the Coronavirus pandemic and the associated uncertain travel planning, there was unfortunately no alternative in the end.”

Enormous economic challenge

Dr. Harald Olschok, General Manager of the Federal Association of the Security Industry (BDSW) and member of the Security Essen Advisory Board agrees:

“From the perspective of our member companies, the decision to cancel Security Essen is fully understandable. Personally, I regret this very much, because it would have been my 15th and last Security Essen as Chief Executive of BDSW and BDGW. But for the security service providers, the Corona crisis represents an enormous economic challenge. I am sure that the management and the entire team of BDSW and BDGW with their affiliated member companies are looking forward to Security Essen 2022 – then under better economic conditions.”

Nedap is excited to share the upcoming OSDP upgrade within Nedap’s long-range RFID reader portfolio for automatic vehicle identification. The portfolio will be upgraded and compatible with V.2.1.7 of the Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP) standard. This upgrade supports the interoperability of our reader portfolio with a growing number of access control and security products. Over the last few years, an increasing number of access control panel manufacturers is supporting OSDP technology and this upgrade enables seamless integration supported by a highly secured communication standard. Nedap will make OSDP V2.1.7 available for both its TRANSIT and uPASS long-range RFID product line.

Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP) standard OSDP has been developed by the Security Industry Association (SIA). According to the SIA, OSDP offers high security and advanced functionalities. The protocol enables bi-directional and encrypted communication based on Secure Channel Protocol (SCP). In addition, for example, OSDP enables monitoring wiring to protect against attack threats. Due to the fact that OSDP is offering secure and bi-directional communication between the reader and third party controller platform, the OSDP upgrade enables security professionals to simplify secured vehicle access.

Automatic Vehicle Identification specialist Nedap is specialized in advanced solutions for Automatic Vehicle Identification for over the past decades. A unique portfolio is developed by Nedap full with high performance long-range RFID and License Plate Recognition systems. Nedap has been at the forefront of simplifying secure vehicle access for decades, while keeping the high accuracy in mind. Security and Parking professionals have been able to improve their operations by benefitting from the latest automatic vehicle identification solutions, by choosing Nedap technology.

OSDP in vehicle access control Technical specialists we would like to encourage to order a demo kit and validate OSDP in vehicle access control applications. For the security professionals OSDP compliancy offers a great opportunity to talk to your customer base about the relevancy of OSDP in security and access control. If you have any questions, please contact us.

OSDP Webinar To give you a complete picture of the opportunities of our updated RFID reader portfolio, Nedap Identification Systems organizes a webinar on the 14th of May, 10.00 AM (CEST). Within this webinar, Ido Wentink (Proposition Manager) and Hans Rappard (Product Specialist), will present in 30 minutes all ins and outs about Nedap’s OSDP upgraded long-range RFID portfolio. Curious? Feel free to register via this link.

Honeywell Fire & PA/VA Solutions is offering a series of online trainings to help you make the most out of your time and stay up to date with developments in the fire detection technologies.
The training sessions are free of charge and you can attend remotely. These will be held in English, will provide an overview of various important topics of fire detection and are addressed to any interested persons from our industry (sales representatives, purchasing, designers, technical staff etc).
Click here for more details and registration.

Bosch Security Systems will cease distributing all but one Sony-branded security camera at the end of the year, upon which the companies’ four-year-old sales cooperation will terminate.

Bosch and Sony signed a contract to establish a business partnership that commenced at the beginning of 2017. As part of the agreed partnership, Sony’s video security customers in all markets excluding Japan have been served and supported by the sales and marketing organization of Bosch Security Systems.

Dissolving the partnership was a likely outcome even going back to 2016 when Bosch and Sony first began working on the framework for their collaboration, Jon Cropley, senior principal analyst, video surveillance, for research firm Omdia.

“At that time, many speculated this was a way for Sony to gradually exit sales and manufacture of surveillance cameras to focus on its image sensor and camera module business. The gradual approach allowed it to continue supporting its surveillance camera customers during this time. A sudden exit could have been more harmful to its brand reputation,” Cropley explains.

Competitive pressures were a likely reason why Sony decided to exit sales and manufacture of video surveillance cameras, Cropley suggests. The average global price of a network video surveillance camera was almost $500 in 2010. Back then, Sony’s share of the global network video surveillance camera market was more than 7%, he says.

“Intense competition from vendors with a lower cost base, such as competitors from China, led average prices to then fall quickly in the next few years. In 2016, the year the partnership between Sony and Bosch began, the average global price of a network video surveillance camera had fallen to less than $120,” he continues. “Sony’s share of the global network video surveillance camera market had also fallen below 2%.”

IPVM has reported that Sony will still have a significant imaging sensor and camera module business. Sony components are regularly used in high-end surveillance products, including from Sony’s branded rivals, ranging from Axis to Hikvision to Bosch. Sony sensors are used in various IoT devices, such as smartphones.

Hikvision Europe, a leading provider of innovative, award-winning security products and solutions, announced that Fred Streefland has been named EMEA Cybersecurity Director. Streefland will lead and support EMEA cybersecurity programs and initiatives, as well as working with cybersecurity institutions and researchers, public authorities, local partners and other key stakeholders of the company. He will be based in the European headquarters in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands.

With more than 20 years of cybersecurity experience in both public and government domains, Streefland is joining Hikvision from Palo Alto Networks, where he worked as the Chief Security Officer (CSO) for Northern and Eastern Europe. During this period, he advised C-level executives of several multinational organizations and officials of Governments on their Cybersecurity challenges and assisted them in implementing a Zero Trust approach. He served as the official spokesman of Palo Alto Networks and was often requested as a keynote speaker at international Cybersecurity conferences.

Streefland will take the lead in EMEA Cybersecurity activities at Hikvision Europe. He will be responsible for the structure, development and maintenance of key internal and external cybersecurity initiatives and programs in the EMEA market.

Streefland’s initial goals at the company will be to further improve the Cybersecurity and Privacy of the Hikvision products and services, and serve as a trusted advisor on Cybersecurity & Privacy for customers, partners, institutions and employees.

“Hikvision is a responsible manufacturer that already has a robust Cybersecurity program in place. I will be working on optimizing this program even further to minimize the potential Cybersecurity risks in Europe and to make sure our European partners get the support they need in their operations”, said Streefland.

Fred Streefland served as Intelligence and Security officer for the Royal Netherlands Air Force, the MIVD and at the NATO headquarters in Brussels for more than 16 years. He left this position to work at IBM Netherlands as central contact for all matters related to Public Safety and Security, as well as Cybersecurity. After a period of 4 years, he joined Accenture as Senior Manager Security and served as project leader on Smart Grid Security. Other tenures include working in ICS/SCADA Security at the European Network for Cyber Security (ENCS) and as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Exact and LeaseWeb. Before joining Hikvision, Streefland acted as Chief Security Officer (CSO) for Northern and Eastern Europe at Palo Alto Networks.

Fred Streefland is also a guest lecturer at the Cyber Security Academy (CSA), an Executive Master program organized by the Technical University of Delft, Leiden University and The University of Applied Sciences The Hague. He holds a bachelor (bc.) of Management, Economics & Law and an Executive Master of Security & Defense (EMSD).

A biometric electoral register has been deployed for upcoming Guinea parliamentary elections with Innovatrics technology and support applied to meet numerous challenges.

Innovatrics completed the project just six months after winning the tender, which the company says is record time. Necessary hardware was delivered, enrollment officers trained, biometric enrollment finalized, and data consolidated to make the voter list ready for card printing.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) of Guinea was provided with the biometric registry solution, and the system was configured by Innovatrics to import data from the legacy, in only three months. Innovatrics worked with HP Enterprise to secure the central servers for running the system, and created software for the enrollment stations to securely collect biometric data from Guinea citizens. The company oversaw the installation and initialization of the software on 4,000 enrollment kits. More than 600 supervisors, prefectural coordinators, maintenance technicians, and CENI officials were trained for the process, and Innovatrics provided support in eight regional centers, consolidated data at the regional level, and secured its transfer to the central server.

The enrollment process registered 5.5 million voters and migrated 6 million records from the legacy system. Top-performing facial recognition and fingerprint biometric algorithms were used to deduplicate the data, and CENI operators tagged deceased and convicted individuals for removal, reducing the total by 170,000. AI age estimation software then checked the photos in the registry to identify possible underage enrollees.

“A specially trained neural network detects the age of the enrollees based on their faces. If they are obviously underage, it sorts them out for rechecking,” explains Innovatrics’ Head of Delivery and Solutions Matus Kapusta, who oversees the Guinea project. The process found 60,000 underage people included in the electoral roll. Records tagged as ineligible voters were not deleted, but simply removed from the voters list.

An International Election Observation Mission has affirmed that international standards have been upheld.

Milestone Systems has introduced its documentation portal, a convenient online portal for resellers, installers, administrators, operators and customers to access technical manuals and guides.

Xprotect VMS and Husky network video recorder manuals and guides are now available in an easily searchable online format in one convenient portal.

“The Milestone documentation portal is the first step in a journey to gather documentation in one convenient location online. Our team is committed to the ongoing development of the portal and increasing the ease of use in accessing product documentation,” said Jesper Just Jensen, VP Products, Milestone Systems.

On the documentation portal, users can search by product or for a specific topic across all manuals and guides, removing the obstacle of looking through numerous manuals to find the right answer. Users can still download PDFs of product manuals to start or administrate Xprotect solutions, but as an added feature, users can now search for information across the documentation portal, ultimately gaining better insights and overview.

When Xprotect VMS is online, the 2020 R1 version will simply connect to the online documentation portal when the user presses F1 for Help. Offline systems will continue to utilise the installed help.

The documentation portal reflects existing document localisations and the user’s browser settings. Localised documents appear when browsing or searching along with deliverables in English, providing language options for users.

The mobile-enabled documentation portal allows users to work on the go and on any device. Digitalising the manual and guide content also makes it easier to find information through the user’s preferred search engine.

Axis Communications has entered the body worn camera market for the first time designed for law enforcement and private security.

The solution – including the robust camera, docking station and system controller – has been designed on an open system architecture, which will allow for integration with a broad range of video management systems (VMS) and evidence management systems (EMS).

The benefits of body worn cameras in capturing evidence, deterring criminal behaviour and training of officers and security personnel, are well-understood in the law enforcement sector and increasingly recognised in the private security industry.

The Axis body worn camera solution is the result of extensive research and development and numerous interviews with law enforcement and private security organisations. One critical aspect of the solution that was highlighted by potential customers was the need to maximize their existing investments in VMS and EMS software, hence the open architecture. The Axis body worn solution can be used with a third-party VMS and EMS, on-premise or in the cloud, allowing for integration with other video surveillance data. It can also be delivered as an end-to-end solution, using Axis Camera Station, the company’s own VMS software.

Fredrik Andersson, Global Product Manager, New Solutions Initiative at Axis Communications, explains: “When we’re in the process of developing a new solution, we’re always committed to deliver the best possible quality of video and audio within the constraints of the specific form factor. For the body worn camera, obvious challenges relate to finding the optimum combination of size, weight, the need for robustness and maximizing battery life. To get all these elements right, our research and iterative design process included numerous conversations with customers, multiple product prototypes and a number of early-stage pilot projects.”

The new Axis body worn camera system features three main hardware components: the camera itself; the camera docking station (8 or 1-bay); and the system controller.

The camera captures video up to 1080p @30fps and audio through dual microphones for noise suppression capabilities. Wide dynamic range technology is employed to guarantee image quality in even the most challenging light conditions, while Axis Zipstream for body worn reduces the demands for storage. Battery power is designed to cover a ‘full shift’, with 12 hours of normal usage and the capability for charging in-car or from a power bank.

The docking station and the system controller are separate units. The system controller provides a single integration and management point, and allows for fast and reliable video offloading (100Mbit per camera). All data is encrypted both at rest and in transfer using AES256 and TLS.

The camera also features built-in GPS/GNSS receiver for location tracking; Bluetooth Low Energy 4.1; IEEE 802.11b/g/n; and a 6-axis gyro and accelerometer.