Safeguarding the People, Property and Assets of Your Organization
Introduction
Enterprise organizations come in all shapes and sizes, but they all share some common challenges, including business continuity, compliance, physical security, IT security and employee safety. The threats seen by these organizations on a daily basis make security a top priority for Board executives. Today, risk management is evolving beyond basic premises protection to focus on business security as a whole.
Today’s enterprise-class customers seek solutions that unify multiple security systems into one platform to simplify system administration, management and operations into one interface. Software platforms that integrate multiple systems and devices together — commonly known as PSIM, command-and-control software or situation management solutions — have been successful in addressing the needs of the public sector, especially in the critical infrastructure and transportation markets where traditionally, funding is often readily available and long purchasing cycles and implementation times are commonplace.
It has become equally important for today’s enterprise customers to deploy solutions that also deliver these new standards of situational awareness and enhanced risk management to their operations. However some of the more traditional PSIM applications have failed to bring together multiple facilities across large geographic regions, including global operations, a key feature demanded by enterprise organizations.
A Look Inside the Enterprise
Many organizations don’t fit the traditional mold of a critical infrastructure site, such as a port, airport or nuclear power plant. These customers are referred to as enterprise organizations, and they are unique in that they are typically widely distributed, cross geographic boundaries, have completely distributed network architecture challenges and, in most cases, currently operate with many smaller security operations centers in place.
Additionally, cities, counties, universities and healthcare facilities have many of the same challenges as a typical enterprise organization. These challenges include: widely distributed facilities that need to be linked together, disparate systems that require integration, a need for consolidated operations, greater situational awareness a clear return on investment for all capital expenditures, enforceable standard operating procedures, consolidated reporting capabilities and the need for more efficient security operations.
They need a solution that can meet today’s business challenges, is easy to deploy, scalable and can grow with them as their businesses needs change and evolve in the future. Crucially, the solution must clearly demonstrate cost effectiveness and generate significant ROI for the organization to get the approval at the “C-suite” level.
Utilizing Immix CC: Enterprise Command Center Software (ECCS)
Reaching far beyond the capabilities of traditional security software platforms, Immix CC is a situational awareness platform used by businesses, institutions and agencies to monitor security, IT and business systems, and protect critical assets. It is the driving force behind today’s private command center movement and is designed to lower the cost of monitoring multiple systems across various locations, increasing the effectiveness and response time of the security team.
Immix is designed to address the enterprise space specifically. Its Web-based architecture and ability to support a variety of network topologies and communication platforms lends itself to the distributed nature of the enterprise market. In fact, the software platform is particularly well suited to global enterprise organizations. Most importantly, it is agile enough to meet the changing dynamics of enterprise businesses. This architecture also supports a rapid deployment model and a strong ROI/TCO model. In one instance, an Immix customer in the entertainment industry was able to deploy a large-scale system of 10 platforms in less than 120 days, saving a significant amount in down time.
The Immix platform was purpose-built, consisting of four major components that ensure the delivery of an enterprise-class security service in an effective and cost-efficient manner:
- Architecture: Completely Web-based, it allows customers to map the system to the specific needs of their organization.
- Open Platform: Open architecture and integration support for a wide variety of third-party devices enables rapid deployment and minimizes expensive, complex piecemeal solutions.
- Automation: Allows for the automation of manual processes to streamline the delivery of security services, eliminating the opportunity for operator error and nuisance alarms,
- Agility: Scalable, highly reliable, secure and flexible
Benefiting the Enterprise
For enterprise organizations, business continuity and risk management have become the new characteristics of the changing security landscape. Business continuity must be ensured across multiple sites and geographic locations throughout the world. At the same time, leaders must assess the risks to business continuity to ascertain the dangers and potential threats facing organizations today. They must do all of this while still maintaining a strict budget and sound technology investment strategies.
The flexible and scalable nature of the Immix solution tackles one of the most common problems that enterprise organizations face: how to bring together a disparate collection of security systems and sensors into one, easy-to-use interface. Immix does this by easily incorporating information from a variety of physical locations into a global security command center that provides enhanced monitoring, streamlines operator requirements and facilitates a rapid response to incidents.
Operators within these enterprise organizations also benefit from the streamlined approach, allowing the single interface to intercept and communicate potential problems, while also prompting next steps for handling alarms and reported incidents. Immix allows email alerts to be automatically filtered so that users can quickly and efficiently determine which messages require immediate attention. Training these operators is also simplified, allowing organizations the ability to concentrate training efforts on a single program rather than multiple systems and monitoring stations. Additionally, Immix allows organizations to add predetermined steps for operators to follow during security events, ensuring faster and more effective response, and greater proficiency.
Real Cost Savings for the Enterprise
In the majority of cases, enterprise customers represent “for profit” businesses, requiring a clear business case, as well as significant ROI to justify capital expenses on ECCS. Company executives must be on board with the initial costs associated with deploying these solutions because they have the ability to reduce overall security costs over time. Here, Immix delivers real ROI for enterprise customers providing significant cost savings and a solution that delivers best-in-class results for streamlining operations. Here are a few categories where Immix customers achieve significant operational cost savings and proven ROI:
Manpower reduction. By consolidating operations, one Immix customer in the retail sector was able to reduce full-time operators and analysts by eight operators per shift, resulting in annual savings in excess of $1 million. Another Immix customer in the entertainment sector was able to reduce their staff by two full-time operators and one supervisor, resulting in annual savings in excess of $320,000.
- Elimination of third party and false alarm fees. By bringing their fire and burglar alarm monitoring in-house, one Immix customer in the financial sector was able to reduce third-party alarm monitoring cost by more than $1 million per year. Another customer in the financial sector reduced their false-alarm fees by $120,000 annually by monitoring their own alarms and using associated video for video verification of all fire and intrusion alarms.
- Extending the life of legacy systems. By integrating six legacy CCTV systems into a common interface, one Immix customer in the city government market was able to save more than $300,000 annually in deferred capital replacement costs.
- Automated reporting and data entry. Automatically creating key management reports allowed one Immix customer in the higher education sector the ability to automate six reports weekly, resulting in annual savings of more than $65,000. Another Immix customer in the pharmaceutical market was able to eliminate manual data entry of alarm and video data into their incident management platform, which resulted in annual savings of more than $48,000.
- Training cost reduction. One Immix customer in the biotechnology market reduced operator-training time by 24 hours per operator, resulting in annual savings of more than $15,000.
Taking a Step Forward
The Immix platform takes a giant step forward from the traditional PSIM system by providing end users with more than just a central point for converged data. Immix brings multiple areas of a security program together into one unified solution, not only to provide information, but to actually help the end user take action in the event of a security threat. It is this unique capability that helps elevate the ECCS to the next level of intuitive situational awareness, monitoring and real time response.
Read more: SureView White Paper
