From the Editor’s Desk: August 2014

It is an established fact that the new Prime Minister backs technology in security! The realisation may be rather late, but it appears that the country’s police forces are now suddenly waking up to the fact that security technology has to be relied on if the rapidly rising crime graph has to be arrested.

Either the current Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi has realised that security technology has to be adopted with the changing times or the visit of the Home Minister, Mr Rajnath Singh, to the Delhi Police Headquarters for a meeting has had something to do with it, one has seen Delhi Police in the news suddenly declaring that it is coming up with new initiatives using technology to either counter crime directly or making it available to the public as a software application tool to reach out to them, whether it is alerts via mobile on traffic jams or via ‘Whatsapp’ on reporting instances of corruption in the force or even the declaration that Delhi will get over 8000 CCTV cameras in the next one year along with a monitoring station that will monitor activities from a central spot. It also declared that some 450 CCTV cameras would keep an eye the regular routes taken by the Prime Minister when he is on the move.

Of course, amidst these proactive steps to ensure that public has a way to report crime and get a suitable response, there were also some rather impractical ideas that Delhi Police initiated. A few weeks ago it declared that it was going to check out the possibility of an air patrol over the Capital’s sky in association with Pawan Hans Helicopters.

It’s another story that I remember the same being tried out about 12-13 years ago, when it had all came to naught because of too many complications. In fact, I remember the then CMD of Pawan Hans Helicopters, Mr NV Sridhar, telling my colleague in an amused tone that Delhi Police had their joy rides in the choppers for a week and then did not get back to Pawan Hans on whether the scheme was on or off. Clearly having a chopper patrol is an impractical idea here in Delhi owing to far too many air space restrictions and the huge costs involved. All this, when much more effective and far cheaper to operate drones are available today!

Our focus for this issue is on Corporate Security and the various ways in which the risks to the corporate world are both changing and increasing. Threats of insider involvement, of information security leaks, of perimeter breaches are all risks that are real and need to be covered. Our conversations with various career professionals dealing with these threats indicate that while the older ones still exist, newer threats such as those posed by “Bring Your Own Device” are cropping up every day and the battle to contain them has to be constant and relentless. We have attempted to cover most angles of the threats to Corporate Security and I am sure you will find these articles both informative and educative.

Please do keep letting us know your views on the contents of Security Today because that is what helps us know the pulse of the industry.

Till we meet again next month with another topic, cheers and keep reading!

 

G B Singh

Email: editor@securitytoday.in
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