Articles by Jeremy Malies

The border with Mexico is an obvious starting point for the security community. Many had assumed that 'wall' would mean a high-tech fence or possibly just a virtual barrier of perimeter intrusion detection systems (PIDS), video surveillance with analytics and thermal imaging. However, during a press conference shortly before inauguration, Mr Trump put journalists straight. Unless there is a mountain or river already doing the work along the 2,000 miles to be protected, this really...

How will the UK's decision to leave the European Union affect security cooperation between its member countries and with European countries? 'Strength through unity' is the term being used by pro-European economists observing the fall-out from Brexit, but it's surely an even more pertinent phrase for the security sector and this is being underlined in the most unexpected quarters. Fifty-six percent of the referendum votes cast in Northern Ireland were for 'Remain' and even sta...

Transport hubs will always be terrorist targets since people congregate in tight clusters (Image credit: deepspace / Shutterstock.com) The attack on Ataturk Airport, Istanbul, comes only three months after the bombing of Brussels Airport. Many are considering common elements in terms of modus operandi and likely perpetrators but the similarities are largely superficial. Airports, like any major transport hub, will always be terrorist targets since people congregate in tight...

No matter how strong the security planning, it will take only one small failure tocreate an opportunity for unimaginable events(Photo credit: Marco Iacobucci EPP / Shutterstock.com) Successful security at UEFA Euro 2016 may well depend on the ability of the French to bring cohesiveness to disparate technologies. Given the scale of the threats, a variety of security solutions are being used visibly and behind the scenes – in addition to the presence of 90,000 police, gend...

What effect will the attacks in Brussels have on aviation security? Screenings inpre-security airport areas have been uncommon, but may become standard practice Will the Brussels airport attack herald a new era of aviation security? Like the bombing of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport in 2011, the Brussels attack took place “landside”, meaning that security precautions would have been low-key and limited to spot checks and the general watchfulness of police office...

The disaster training exercise took place at four sites, with the primary locationbeing a disused power station in Kent (Image credit: London Fire Brigade) Europe's biggest-ever disaster simulation provided a test to evaluate London’s ability to "detect, prevent and if necessary to withstand, handle and recover from disruptive challenges." Exercise Unified Response replicated the aftermath of a tower block falling into Waterloo Station, a transport hub on the south bank...

UK citizens will vote on June 23rd 2016 on whether to remain within the European Union A significant aspect of the four-month operation leading to the capture in March of Salah Abdeslam, Europe’s most wanted man, is that French and Belgian police worked alongside each other with minimal protocol complications since the countries are not only geographical neighbours but members of the European Union. Abdeslam was arrested for his alleged involvement in the Paris attacks o...

Energy efficiency extends beyond a company’s running costs vs. its carbonfootprint, to using security technological intelligently to the company’senvironmental advantage Even as manufacturers are becoming greener and innovation is reducing our industry’s carbon footprint , is there more we could be doing? Can we adapt our general operational methods to be smarter and help save the planet? Are we learning from other industries, do we absorb things quickly...

The development of PSIM security systems and the move towards smart buildings and cities holds huge potential for environmental performance in the security industry Is the drive to give clients improved CCTV, perimeter protection, intruder alarms and access control making our industry any greener? Is technological innovation consistent with reducing security industry’s carbon footprint? In any case, green operating practices are more a side effect of current developments...

Many security manufacturers are working towards ISO 14001, an internationally-recognised standard for the environmental management of businesses How green are security industry manufacturers? As innovation (much of it driven from home video and mobile phones) continues, it’s likely that our sector’s carbon footprint will decrease since compact products use up fewer raw materials. Even casual observers will note that integrators are falling over themselves to gain e...

Technology can safeguard other motorists, and help highway authorities to communicate with wayward drivers to avoid accidents There has been a spate of accidents worldwide in which cars have been driven either knowingly or unwittingly against the flow of traffic and into oncoming vehicles. Existing and imminent technology from the security sector can prevent such occurrences, alerting responsive drivers to their error and safeguarding other motorists. I write this shortly af...

With every technological advance that canbenefit museum management comes anotherthat may assist thieves  When protecting art treasures, the first instinct for many security professionals may well be to look at recent advances in technology. Hasn’t the advent of IP-addressable devices provided sufficient tools to protect art exhibits from theft in a discreet manner? Apparently not, and entrenched attitudes abound among curators. Consultants who so much as m...

The Eiffel tower illuminated with colours of the French national flag on November 16 Let’s say it up front: The physical security sector has limited solutions to address events like those in Paris on the 13th November. The series of coordinated terrorist attacks consisted of mass shootings, suicide bombings, and hostage-taking in which 129 people died. Among the dead were 89 people at the Bataclan theatre where American band Eagles of Death Metal was playing at the t...

Major art heists often feature audacity that defeats even the most thorough security protocols  Museum security, like art, is ever-changing. Traditional security practices like manned guarding alone are not sufficient to keep thieves at bay. Modern security technologies such as video surveillance, motions detectors, intruder alarms and other physical security devices also play an equally important role in securing museums and its art work. Regrettably, having all the...

Millions of dollars are spent annually at border crossings on technology such as buried volumetric sensors Border control forces, train operators, ferry companies and humanitarian organisations have spent much of 2015 concerned with people trafficking between the northern coast of France and the United Kingdom. Now the focus has switched to migrants fleeing civil war in Syria. It is one of the biggest migrant crisis that Europe has witnessed so far, with hundreds of refugees s...

The sheer number of travelers and lack of passport control in the Schengen Area in Europe tests railroad security’s capabilities Railway security faces the unenviable task of monitoring hundreds of thousands of passengers travelling between countries every day, and an attack on a train in Europe last month has cast a spotlight on the conflict between offering fast and efficient transport services whilst conducting thorough surveillance of passengers and luggage in transi...

Intimate body search at airports also takes a psychological toll on the person conducting the search SourceSecurity.com's European Correspondent, Jeremy Malies gives an account of the Body Search 2015 security conference that was held at Hounslow, London. Along with emphasis on aviation security, the conference also covered an array of safety and commercial applications. Some of the topics outlined in this article include: New techniques in body scanning, the exasperation publ...

If airport perimeter fencing is vulnerable then covert detection methods should be used Lack of airport perimeter security would be laughable, if it weren’t so serious. A recent farcical breach of security in London is drawing renewed attention to airport perimeter protection. I want to focus on airport perimeter security, but we’ll start with critical infrastructure in general: A nun, a housepainter and a gardener break into a nuclear facility. This sounds like t...

A US Department of Homeland Security investigation showed that undercover agents defeated airport screening in 95 percent of cases by smuggling mock explosives and weapons past checkpoints. With admirable transparency, U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) has described how so-called “Red Teams” posed as regular passengers and exposed inadequate measures at some of the busiest airports across the United States. The revelations came a few days before Body Search 2...

The technological resources from the physical security sector available to prisons dealing with contraband threats are effective For those outside the security industry, the idea of prison contraband rarely extends beyond the old gag of a file inside a cake. In fact, contraband at prisons and other custodial premises is a major challenge: deterring and detecting it occupies many man-hours, and manufacturers devote much R&D activity to the problem. Contrabands in prison T...

Potential deployments of video analytics, or my own preferred term “intelligent scene analysis,” are being worked on by some of the best minds at university campuses across the United Kingdom. Later this year I will visit Kingston University whose Digital Imaging Research Centre is one of the largest computer vision groups in Europe. Violence prevention through analytical intelligence Here, I talk to Prof David Marshall of Cardiff University, who describes work...

The deputy commissioner spoke about trends and budgeting to MBA students at Cass Business School One of the main challenges for senior officers in London’s Metropolitan Police Service is to develop policing techniques that reflect changing demographics. The main demands on an officer’s time are complex cases, often involving child protection and requiring interaction with other organisations such as health services. Missing persons' cases can now be extremely compl...

Stowaway incidents in the last two months in the United Kingdom have dramatised the desperate nature of individual attempts to cross borders. They have also exposed the callous methods of human traffickers. Sixty-eight foreign nationals were discovered in four lorries at the port of Harwich on the south coast of England in June after the vehicles had disembarked from a Stena Line ferry entering English waters from Holland. None of the group, which included 15 children and tw...

The nature of crime in general – and particularly types of theft – are changing. Craig Mackey, Deputy Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, says falling rates of conventional “property” crime are being of offset by an increase in computer-related crimes. Fall in “property” crime rate Mackey stressed that there has been no “magic bullet” responsible for the pronounced fall in burglaries and other prope...

Unrealistic promises by over-enthused marketers and under-delivery by R&D departments have damaged the cause of video analytics almost since its inception. For me, the exaggeration reached its worst point when industry pundits suggested that we would soon be able to identify and alert on anomalous behaviour of the kind demonstrated by the Tsarnaev brothers in the moments before the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Mainstream journalists speculated that the two Chechen broth...

The physical security community is contributing expertise and equipment of many kinds to the country As rescue teams and aid workers from around the world converge on Nepal after the country's 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the physical security community is contributing expertise and equipment of many kinds to a country whose government has described it as being “on a war footing.” At time of writing, conservative estimates of the fatalities are around 5,000, but many,...

Questions surrounding the Germanwings Airbus A320 air crash centre not just on mental health, but on a topic we deal with daily – access control. According to the flight recorder, the co-pilot of the doomed aircraft locked himself alone in the cockpit and deliberately slammed the plane into the side of a mountain in the French Alps, killing himself and 149 people. Early in the investigation and based on incontrovertible evidence from the flight recorder, Brice Robin (a prose...

Anything that can incite a crowd surge is a security threat in a sports arena Security at sports stadiums is making headlines across several countries during a week when UBM announced that Protection & Management 2015 (which includes the IFSEC International trade fair) will feature Karren Brady (Baroness Brady), a career soccer executive, as one of its inspirational keynote speakers. As I type, inquests are being held into the deaths of some of the 96 people who were kill...

With elections due later this year in the UK, Spain and Switzerland, attitudes to the prevailing political landscape of austerity are changing rapidly. Are physical security budgets in the public sector ever protected from cuts, and what is the outlook for our industry? Consider the landscape: A left-leaning party has come to power in Greece on an anti-austerity platform and with the stated intention of halving the country’s €315bn debts. Angela Merkel, the German Chanc...

The obstacles preventing convergence with fire systems appear substantial The IT network began as a dedicated structure within a building or facility. From this starting point, we have seen telephones, HVAC, access control and increasingly CCTV/video residing on the same platform. If today’s facility managers were offered a new building with separate networks for each type of subsystem, they would react with incredulity. The exception is fire protection, where the life-...