Tech Systems, Inc. - Experts & Thought Leaders

A partnership agreement between Tech Systems, Inc. (TSI) and CriticalArc will provide healthcare organisations with more powerful options to protect their staff through optimised responses to workplace violence incidents. The agreement between the two companies means TSI will offer CriticalArc’s award-winning SafeZone technology to its base of over 1,000 customers across the U.S., with an initial focus on healthcare clients, followed by other vertical markets.   SafeZone benefits For the first time, TSI customers will have a real-time view of all incidents, the resources available to assist, and the means to coordinate an optimal response for their staff. Other benefits will include mass and targeted communications, tip reporting, and geo-locating staff when they request assistance. This will make it easy for organisations to connect with and respond to their people. Safety Everywhere™ TSI provides customers with 24/7 support and has built a reputation for fanatical customer service Unlike a typical staff duress system, SafeZone provides Safety Everywhere™, allowing organisations to protect their people wherever they have a duty of care: on campus and in buildings, in parking areas, in community clinics, and for individuals travelling or working in the community. Ensuring that healthcare workers feel safe and confident wherever they are translates to better retention and reduced costs. TSI provides customers with unconditional 24/7 support and has built a reputation for fanatical customer service, bringing subsystems together through planning, design, and project implementation, and service-centric solutions from its team members across the U.S. Customer engagement “TSI and CriticalArc are both focused on providing unparalleled customer success, and our expertise, capabilities, and values are perfectly aligned,” says Wayne Smith, TSI President. “SafeZone has delighted customers and attained industry-leading retention rates.” “With exceptionally high customer engagement, the technology has overcome the pitfalls that have limited the value of traditional staff duress and lone-worker safety solutions. We are very excited that SafeZone gives our customers game-changing operational capabilities that will generate immediate value.” Improving employee safety Darren Chalmers-Stevens, Chief Operating Officer, CriticalArc welcomed the close alignment between the two companies, saying “We are focused on addressing the rise in workplace violence by giving organisations the tools to improve employee safety, incident response, security team co-ordination, and wellbeing.” “We are delighted to be working with TSI to bring the benefits of SafeZone to even more customers across the US.”

HID Global’s pivCLASS Registration Engine provides the VA Financial Services Center with a single, PIV-compliant access control credential. The Financial Services Center in Austin, Texas is an organization of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that offers a range of financial and accounting products and services to both the VA and other government agencies. When the Financial Services Center and its 300 employees moved into a brand new facility it needed to implement an access control and credentialing system that would both enable it to manage the access of its employees and also comply with FIPS-201, which requires a common identification standard for Federal employees and contractors as mandated by the government thanks to HSPD-12, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12. Secured government buildings With few reference points within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the VA Financial Services Center would enter unchartered territory as it began the process to implement Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards as its credentialing solution for all of its employees and contractors. VA Financial Services Center needed to implement a solution, verify the cardholder’s identity, and then harvest the data for use The project was one of the first of its kind where a government facility planned to use the full capabilities of the PIV card for its employees and contractors to gain physical and logical access to secured government buildings and computer resources, according to Royce Cox, account manager at Tech Systems’ local Austin office. Tech Systems served as the systems integrator for the Financial Services Center project. To use the full capabilities of the PIV card, the VA Financial Services Center needed to implement a solution that could validate each employee’s PIV credential, verify the cardholder’s identity, and then harvest the data for use with a physical access control system. Effective access control The VA Financial Services Center turned to HID Global’s pivCLASS Registration Engine software, to provide a solution with the ability to receive, store, recall and send information in a secure fashion from each PIV card to the physical access control system. pivCLASS Registration Engine, a software-based solution, is used in conjunction with the Software House C•CURE 800/8000 physical access control system to allow the VA Financial Services Center to use the PIV card as a single card access control solution facility-wide. Card holders use the PIV ID card to gain access into the building and verify privileges once inside the facility. “This system allows us to automate the entry of PIV badge information into the physical security system, ensuring effective access control. Additionally, it allows us to easily grant limited access (areas within the building and time access) to VA employees visiting from other stations, which eliminates the need for visitors to wait for daily passes,” said Howard Harrison, VA Financial Services Center Facility Manager. “Also once in the system, as long as there is not a badge change we can grant access on an as visit basis.” Revocation status of the cardholder If at some time in the future it finds that a certificate has been revoked, it can go in to the C•Cure system and suspend the card as well" In addition to using the PIV cards for internal facility and logical security access purposes, the Financial Services Center continuously checks the revocation status of the cardholder of the FIPS 201 compliant card on an ongoing basis. “After registering the PIV cards in the VA’s C•Cure 800 access control system via pivCLASS Registration Engine, our software revalidates all the certificates that we know about each day,” said Geri Castaldo, vice president of Business Development, Federal Identity with HID Global. He further added, “If at some time in the future it finds that a certificate has been revoked, it can go in to the C•Cure system and suspend the card as well as send an email to a distribution list and say that it found a revoked card.” Results Today, the Financial Services Center uses its PIV cards to manage the access of employees and contractors at its Austin, Texas facility. In addition, employees also use their PIV cards to log onto their computers, providing for a more secure environment within the facility.

MIPS 2017’s theme ‘Together We Make the World See the Future’ reflected a newly clarified company purpose Milestone Systems, the open platform company in IP video management software (VMS), held its 12th Milestone Integration Platform Symposium (MIPS) this month in San Antonio, Texas, with over 500 attendees. It is an open platform community event engaging hundreds of channel and alliance partners, customers, media people, Milestone experts and management. Milestone business activities and product innovations were shared, and 60 solution partners showcased their integrated offerings and services. Community focus on combined solution power This year’s event theme ‘Together We Make the World See the Future’ reflected a newly clarified company purpose. The emphasis is on community focus for the combined solution power of the Milestone open platform and its partners. CEO & President Lars Thinggaard appeared virtually as the audience put on VR headsets to visit beautiful landmarks of Denmark as inspiration to ‘see the future’. “We can only do this together,” said Kenneth Hune Petersen, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Milestone, from the stage. “We believe that the co-creation of value is unique to our open platform community.” Milestone community initiatives Petersen presented the three pillars of the new Milestone community initiatives begun last year, and more are planned in future. The Milestone Marketplace will start with new developments for the Milestone Store, the Solution Finder is evolving into the Solution Portal, and the Developers Forum is expanding. The afternoon was devoted to touring the Community Innovation Lab where Milestone Solution and Technology Partners demonstrated the latest innovations in the industry. After more VR fun watching introductions for the exhibit sections, each group was led by Milestone managers, and feedback walls in each category throughout the hall journey invited brainstorming. Milestone’s open platform community offers a framework to succeed – together – leveraging each other’s innovations Key note speeches On day two, Milestone VP Americas Tim Palmquist gave his keynote speech, further developing his topic from last year’s MIPS event: End to End is a Dead End; The Road to the Future is Open. He questioned whether the glory days are over for the surveillance market and recommended a more realistic look at today’s maturing IP market which is experiencing a natural consolidation, product price wars and other competitive factors. “It’s no longer fast growth and ‘easy money’ like the early phases in a technology lifecycle, so new business models must be developed to encompass the next market disruptions that will come. Milestone’s open platform community offers a framework to succeed – together – leveraging each other’s innovations,” said Palmquist. Digitisation of security systems Mike Sherwood, Milestone Director of Technical Operations, Americas, spoke on ‘The Engine of Innovation’: “We are driven to see one another succeed: we cannot develop in a vacuum. The best companies understand that it takes more than just one company alone to really succeed. I would reword Neil Armstrong’s famous moon landing remark, that we believe in many small steps to make a big leap!” DELL VP Ron Pugh took the stage to talk about the digitisation of everything in our lives and how the Internet of Things (IoT) can unlock the potential of the unconnected by bridging IT and Operational Technology (OT). Milestone Partner NMS presented the breakthrough SpotterRF compact radar surveillance integration with XProtect VMS that gives aerial and ground views for perimeter protection. Milestone open platform solutions Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport shared knowledge gained from growing their systems on the Milestone open platform, including RFIDreaders to manage taxi traffic, and a Unified Command Vehicle with six cameras as well as a Mobile Camera Trailer with solar power. Jamie Ritchie said: “We are building for capacity with a focus on multi-purpose solutions. In our work, we always run into the unknown: the future is just the next exit away – and with the open platform, we are excited about it!” Breakout sessions in the afternoon had parallel Technology and Business Tracks covering such topics as ‘New Cool stuff in the XProtect platform’, ‘Advances in Technology Evolving the Business Model’, Video Enabling IoT with Metadata’, ‘Public Safety & Transportation Interoperability’, ‘Video-Verified Access Control’ and ‘Cloud Solutions that Work with Today’s Technology’. "The feedback we are getting from our community is a key element for setting the direction in our product development" Global Advisory Board In early 2016 Milestone created a new global Advisory Board with the first of several groups focused on the Advanced products. Others are being formed to focus on the Business Ready portfolio, overall Business Strategy and the Developers Forum. Each has members that represent the spectrum of stakeholder roles: end users, partners and Milestone staff. Monthly questionnaires have been sent (in addition to the annual global partner survey), and quarterly meetings held. “The feedback we are getting from our community is a key element for setting the direction in our product development. We see a big opportunity for high-performing, platform-centric products with strong connectivity. This shift from product to platform thinking applies to both our software and hardware offerings, and is initially addressed in the XProtect 2017 R1 release,” said Milestone CTO Bjorn Eilertsen. Awards and recognitions The final night of MIPS announced the following awards: Anixter: Distribution Partner of the Year (Americas) Wesco: Distribution Partner of the Year (USA) Southwest Microwave: Solution Partner of the Year Quantum Corporation: Technology Partner of the Year Differential Networks/ Spotter RF/ NMS: MIP Integration of the Year Convergint Technologies (Seattle, WA): Installation of the Year Brady Integrated Security: Education Partner of the Year Convergint Technologies (Houston, TX): Retail Partner of the Year Tactical Micro/Benchmark Electronics: Transportation Partner of the Year Tech Systems: Healthcare Partner of the Year Stone Security: City Surveillance Partner of the Year App-Techs Corporation: Regional Partner of the Year AND Government Partner of the Year Prosegur Technologia (Argentina): Regional Partner of the Year Presidio: National Partner of the Year Bosch: Camera Partner of the Year, Americas Axis Communications: Supported Camera #6,000 in Milestone Device Pack release 9.0 The first-ever Milestone Community Kickstarter Contest Winner of awards valued at $50,000 was Parking Spotter. Milestone Systems will be hosting MIPS Community events in Macao end of February and in Dubai early May, as well as other Milestone events in many regions throughout the year.