sign in sign up
<<
Home , Business intelligence

LEVERAGING INTELLIGENCE IN SECURITY STRATEGY oday, nothing is more critical to security and HARNESS BIG loss prevention operations than meaningful data. Every department within the operation Today, the sources and volume of data collected have bears the responsibility to not only provide exploded. Security operations collect every event and T incident from every transaction from various sources useful data, but to continually improve the value of that data. Business Intelligence (BI) is used to help including telephone/radio calls, alarms, environmen- companies gain insight into their operations; segment tal sensors, intrusion-detection systems, and video and target information to improve customer security, . safety, and experience while finding anomalies in the The modern security department uses a set of pro- heaps of data to run more efficiently and effectively. cesses and supporting technologies for data manage- This white paper explores how to change the game ment to allow security practitioners greater flexibility for companies. Learn how to collect and leverage in cobbling together disparate systems into a unified data to achieve effective loss prevention, risk mitiga- security that enables Security Di- tion, efficient fraud detection, incident , and rectors to know exactly what’s going on, in real-time monitoring. while providing analysis to generate actionable items that can give security operations the agility it needs

CAPITALIZING ON :

Strategies outperforming companies are taking to deliver results

Leaders are And are % % 75 166 2.2x of Leaders cite more likely to more likely to growth as the make most have formal key source of decisions career path value from based on data for analytics

80% 60% 85%

Leaders Leaders have Leaders have the impact predictive some form of of analytics analytics shared analytics investments capabilities resources Leveraging Business Intelligence in Security Strategy in times of crises. ACT We define “big data” as a capability that allows com- Proactive Risk panies to extract value from large volumes of data. Reduction Like any capability, it requires investments in tech- nologies, processes, and governance. There is no doubt that business intelligence software provides the ability to analyze a multitude of transac- tions and information on one centralized platform, empowering users to capture, analyze, and glean Understand actionable insight from the layers of data within the SEE EVERYTHING Context enterprise. Data-driven risk requires situational awareness that can only come from a sys- SEE EVERYTHING temic and holistic approach. True value comes from correlating large amounts of incident and security data and presenting it in a visually appealing format, IT OPERATIONS SECURITY & LOSS PREVENTION whereby users are able to quickly draw conclusions • User Management • Outcomes & Involvements and act on them in a timely manner. • App Life cycle Management • Savings & Losses • • Compliance & Audits • • Exception Alerting Nowhere is this more true than in the security func- • Network Management • Manpower Efficiency tion, where protection can only be as complete as situ- ational awareness. By giving safety, security, risk man- agement, and loss prevention managers the ability to reality of its application in the business unit and in track, organize, and analyze their data via configurable small to medium-sized . For the purposes visualizations, BI software can provide con- of this paper, we will consider the iTrak® Business text and comparison of security-related information. Intelligence package available from iView Systems. This context moves the risk capabilities of an organi- While there are many competitors in the BI field— zation toward prevention from a traditional reactive many of which are already in use in reporting and documentation function, providing the that have not adopted BI for security—iView software ability to show causality and structure, while giving is built specifically for the needs of security, surveil- insight into security and safety-related issues. lance, and loss prevention. Unlike SAP, Microsoft BI, IBM Cognos, and other enterprise-level BI solutions, More than 86 percent of respondents to a June 2016 iTrak® is not a software that needs to be bent to the survey by CIO Insight now say that BI is important to task of security and loss prevention through extensive their company and intrinsic to their role. Global rev- customization and programming, but one that can be enue in the business intelligence and analytics immediately deployed to produce results. will grow more than 5 percent in 2016, reaching $16.9 billion this year according to a recent Gartner forecast. But it is only now that BI and analytics have BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE WITH ROOTS IN SECURITY AND LOSS PREVENTION matured enough that the market is offering easy- to-use, agile products designed for specific business BI is not shaping just the practice of security and functions. Off-the-shelf software products provide a loss prevention, but also their overall role in the way for data to be incorporated into larger enterprise enterprise. “In the security and related risk fields, BI. They are grounded in specific functions in a way data comes in an unending stream from every device that fills the gap between the promise of BI and the and direction,” says Martin Drew, president of iView Systems. Harnessing that data provides operational insights that create greater organizational efficiencies. The investment in security is no longer just about protecting assets—but about leveraging those ca- pabilities to create a financial return that is directly attributable to that investment. Security practitioners have long competed at a disad- vantage with other departments that made demon- strable connections to the financial bottom line. As the IT function became more integrated with security operations, the requirement to “make a business case” became the challenge for every upgrade or new investment. But as Avi Perez, the chief technical offi- 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual cer for Pyramid Analytics writes, the best practices of and is processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than business intelligence are not about making business text. Companies can buy back time using compelling vi- cases, but about solving problems. suals and eliminate the noise of reporting. The iTrak® BI application was built explicitly for the security function and is rooted in just that—detect- ing anomalies in the data to solve problems. The first “Casinos would spend as much as five days of every and most obvious return on investment BI makes is month just doing required manual reports,” says in the reduction of manual security processes. Fully Giselle Chen, senior business intelligence analyst at 76 percent of midsize or larger companies (more iView Systems. Automating that process can virtual- than 500 employees) relied on manual processes ly eliminate that time requirement and improve the for exception alert reporting from physical security accuracy of reports, while speeding the dissemina- systems as recently as two years ago according to tion of the information to all identified stakeholders ASIS International research. Fewer than 30 percent by simply scheduling the reports to run at whatever of these same organizations had invested in business required interval. intelligence at that time. Considering that fully 71 “Several dashboards can eliminate virtually hun- percent of companies were using BI in some aspect dreds of reports and provide the ability to quickly of their operations as early as 2012, this represented a drill down from the highest summary to as many comparatively slow adoption rate by security practi- established groups and sub-groups as required—even tioners. When iView Systems committed to change down to individual incidents,” says Chen. The inves- these with its iTrak® BI it found one of the tigation is not conducted through reams of paper, but most ready sectors to be the gaming industry. by highly intuitive paths navigated by the simple click Leveraging Business Intelligence in Security Strategy

of a mouse. An international and analyzed by specific such as a hotel Several dashboards can eliminate regions, types of proper- would be able to identify gaps ties, or seasons of the year. in efficiency as the aggregate virtually hundreds of reports This is the nature of how effect impacts the overall BI and analytics provide organization. Users can also established reports and expect a substantial decline dashboards to raise situ- in errors. While errors will always occur, through BI ational awareness while providing ad hoc reporting they can be addressed at a systemwide process level to investigate the source of problems. Throughout and fixed once. With manual reporting, a certain the process, data visualizations depict the rows and persistent level of error exists mostly at the incident columns of raw data in an intuitive format. Incident report level. Training and active monitoring can help reports presented as bar charts immediately draw the to reduce these, but human error is simply the cost of eye to anomalies. Pie charts, heat maps, and bubble doing business with manual processes. graphs all create pictures that more directly engage the problem-solving capacity of the human brain. : A NEW VIEW. By filtering out all the steps it takes to get from raw From this larger awareness, gaps can be explored data to the dashboard display, BI software makes it easier and faster for end users to understand the relatively low cost to a business unit, with less information and how it relates to their department dependence on IT. and operations using customizable data visualizations “Reports are highly customizable and the training and dashboards. to use the BI toolset can take as little as 10 minutes,” says Chen. “Once a system is implemented, much SHOWING THE BIG PICTURE AS WELL of the data is already customized according to the AS SUPPORTING DETAILS requirements of the facility and the organization. The Another key benefit in every security environment data, entered once, can serve many purposes without is reducing the impact of false alarms. “As much as the burden of multiple entry in different systems. 80 percent of any front-line security officer’s day can From there, end users can create and customize consist of responding to false alarms,” says Chen. The dashboards and reports with a simple drag-and- high rate of false alarms inflates the number of per- drop. This ad hoc capability to create new scenarios, sonnel required to guard a facility and can reduce the combine disparate data sources, and explore a variety response time to actual incidents—increasing costs, of permutations and parameters of data are all part of while lowering efficiency. a mature BI system that no longer requires extensive With BI, supervisors have a real-time awareness of programming competencies. how their resources are allocated—where officers The key to the success of iTrak® BI is the fact that are dispatched, which officers are on break—while users don’t need IT experts by their side to work with distinguishing proprietary from contract staff and the data presented in the dashboard. Users can access armed from unarmed officers. the dashboards, manipulate and analyze data, and bring in other members of a team to work together SELF-SERVICE BUSINESS on certain projects. INTELLIGENCE (SSBI) Self-Service BI enables business end users to rapidly design, deploy, and analyze reliable data, at a Leveraging Business Intelligence in Security Strategy

MOVING FROM REACTION TO PREVENTION AND PREDICTION The key to the success of iTrak® The value proposition for BI in the security sector is BI is the fact that users don’t need not limited to creating efficiencies. Oft-cited in the IT experts by their side to work industry literature is the capability for retail facil- ities to mine surveillance systems to better under- with the data presented in the stand traffic patterns and position products with a dashboard. data-driven understanding of their environment. Surveillance systems can also be used to monitor and enforce safety practices in warehouses and other Packaged applications like iTrak®BI allow organiza- environments where injuries are common. Access tions to deploy BI on a small scale for a single depart- control systems and computer log-ins can provide ment and then expand seamlessly to support other international businesses with better awareness of how departments using the same model and platform, de- remote facilities are being used and create savings livering a consistent view of enterprise information. through fine-tuning HVAC systems and even re- BI will move increasingly to cloud deployments and ducing and increasing office footprints according to mobile platforms with data security as the prime actual needs. governor in the transition, and the total cost of own- ership will continue to drop while the realized return A LOOK AHEAD AT BI on investment will continue to grow quickly Data is the water we swim in today. We are creators Within a decade, the way we did business 10 years and consumers of data and wielders of the intelli- ago will be unrecognizable. The fundamentals of gence it provides. The most substantial impact in security and loss prevention will remain familiar, but 2017 will be the continued deployment of specialized how their function partners with other departments BI platforms from analytic packages which come and contributes to the mission of the organization as with an integrated set of tools, data schemas, business a whole will be limited only by the imagination of the views, and predefined reports and dashboards that practitioner. significantly accelerate the time it takes to get a BI solution up and running.