The SlimLane 950

With many municipalities pushing through ongoing restrictions and ordinances governing social distancing and COVID related guidelines, many companies are facing a difficult reality; comply or fail. Serious fines and health department shutdowns have been seen for those who fail to accommodate restrictions on people spacing and masking, and so, companies are left with little choice. For some, this may mean cameras with the ability to detect crowding and masks, but for those with a high volume through a secured area, the solution is a contactless turnstile. These turnstiles read credentials without contact and ensure compliance with remaining socially distant and out of contact with others.

The SlimLane 950 double swing door security entrance lane offers a high bidirectional throughput and uncompro-mising security. With its transparent, elegant design and minimal footprint, the SlimLane 950 is designed to integrate perfectly into any architectural style. Its wide lane ensures easy access for people with reduced mobility, wheelchairs, large carts or wide objects. Equipped with high processing capacity and an exclusive detection system, the SlimLane 950 guarantees accurate user tracking and prevents any unauthorised use.The SlimLane 950 is a modular product that can be installed as a single or a multi-lane array and can also be combined with the SlimLane 940 standard lane model.

 

Its features are designed with our new world in mind and include:

  • A handrail frame: steel beam with RoHS anti-corrosion zinc plating treatment and stainless steel posts, to include photoelectric cells for user detection and the logic control board.

  • Self-supporting kinematic steel frame with RoHS anti-corrosion zinc plating treatment. The frame contains the electromechanical drive assembly for the swinging obstacle and the electronic control boards.

  • Clear, 10 mm thick tempered monolithic glass obstacles, swinging in the direction of user passage.

  • AS1167 logic control board, equipped with ARM technology and the Linux operating system, ensuring advanced traffic management. An embedded Web server, accessible by a simple web browser, offering an interface for the configuration of functional gate parameters as well as a complete diagnostic and maintenance tool.

  • Transfer of information from XML-RPC protocol through an Ethernet or USB interface, and dry contacts: passage authorisation, passage information, reader locking, fraud, equipment failure.

  • Orientation and function pictograms indicating gate and passage status to the user.

  • Proprietary DIRAS detection system, consisting of a high-density matrix of infrared transmitter/receiver photocells beams. It follows users progression through the gate as well as ensuring their safety during opening/closing of the obstacles.

  • Finishing plate for post.

 

 

Brushed #4 AISI 304L stainless steel housing is used for the panels, housing, and frame that accesses the internal components. It uses electromechanical drive units with a controller providing progressive accelerations and decelerations of the obstacle, for smooth movement and enhanced user safety. To prevent forced entry, the geared electromagnetic brake will lock down the obstacles in place.

This turnstile is rich in features and is not like what you might see in a subway or theme park. Thick but aesthetically pleasing glass panels combine with the stainless steel for a sleek and modern look without sacrificing security. Critically, such a system should comply with COVID restrictions for years to come as it requires no person to person handing of credentials, or even person to contact point.

Security Technology of South Texas is one of the area’s most experienced and professional teams in physical security, access control, and surveillance. If you would like an assessment made for your business, please contact us at

 

admin@gostst.com

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The Chip: Moving from Sensors to Perceivers

Conventionally, the sensor devices at the edge of our cloud infrastructure have been pretty dumb. With limited computational resources and greater focus being on moving data to the cloud to be processed, these devices are limited in their provision of privacy as well. Moving into this next decade, the company “Perceive” aims  to become a major player in providing data-center level computation at the network edge.

    The teams working on these devices employ machine learning and neural networks to build and deploy software and tools for a chip they call “ergo”.  The “objective of [their] effort…is trying to upgrade the whole idea of the sensor into something [they] call a ‘perceiver’”. Rather than a dumb device that streams up pixels or audio, these devices will be able to perform data-center class operations on that data and show the user the results of those analytics.

    Doing this reduces the amount of power required to stream to the cloud, but critically preserves the privacy of the user through never allowing any raw data to leave the device where is is most susceptible to attack and compromise.There are a great number of articles out there detailing hacks into people’s smart home devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home via their smartphones. In one instance, Amazon employees were sending each other videos of people inside their residences. And certainly governments domestic and foreign alike love to see lax or non-existent security as they expand the ever-growing surveillance states.

    Only recently has it become technically possible to perform these high level computations on edge devices, and the strategy for privacy used to be an afterthought. The combination of mil-spec privacy and encryption, machine learning and hardware and software are setting these devices to give the notoriously open and unprotected cloud-based systems a run for their money. The major advantage of performing computations for analytics locally is that it isolates that data and makes situations like spying or hacks much more difficult to pull off.

    The device itself is a diminutive 7X7 millimeters or about the size of a shirt button. Due to not needing external memory, the device is ideal for very small, battery operated gadgets and larger devices as well. The goal is for this technology to become so ubiquitous that anything and everything than can have a perceiver will. While this sounds a lot like the dream sold to us about 5G, the difference here is the security focus and not being web-connected. By effectively being “air-gapped”, the items containing perceivers would be un-hackable barring physical theft of the item.

    The first items the company wants to focus on are, logically, security cameras and IoT home devices. Eventually they see expansion into appliances, drones, and even clothing and food items. At this moment, there are 25 billion sensors on Earth, and it is estimated that by 2025 there will be 1 trillion. This number is over 100 times as many people as are on Earth, and it makes sense to want to protect certain things from attack by not connecting them to the cloud. However, without internet connection, services like monitoring by humans would have to be performed in-house or by machine learning algorithms. It is still to be seen what the impact of these types of security focused “perceivers” will be.

 

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Sublethal Remote Camera Guns

 

A company out of South Africa has introduced a unique product for those looking for an alternative to human security presence. The Sublethal Remote Gun is a non-lethal weapon mounted and connected to a camera that allows the user to engage an intruder without being on-site. These remote weapons are designed to fight back against intruders while keeping the user safe. Here we will take a look at the specifics of this security alternative.

 

The primary weapon is a paintball gun using nylon rounds. It is designed to be similar to the rubber bullets used in riot control – causing extreme pain without being life threatening. It is not recommended to use regular paintballs, but frangible solid casing pepper balls can be used. The magazine holds up to 155 rounds just under the size of a US quarter. The gun is difficult to disable and in most cases is mounted on a pole of nearly 20 feet, able to fire down the pole to protect itself from tampering. In the event that real ammunition might be used against the gun to disable it, upgrades to the casing are offered to make it resistant to small arms fire.

The gun is very easy to use and requires only a few minutes of training. Because of this, every controller has a key to lock it down and prevent young children from accessing it. During power outages, the sublethal gun has a battery that can keep it running for 3 days, depending on level of use. Under tests the gun often lasts up to 7 days on a deep battery cycle. A solar panel and solar charge controller can also be fitted to ensure the gun remains functional during an outage.

 

The system is built to be modular but it has not been tested with a lethal firearm and the company does not endorse or assist with such a modification. Although the weapon is designed and sold in South Africa primarily for defense of farms, many other possible installations are suggested by the manufacturer. These include what may be a somewhat optimistic list to include everything from households and businesses to server rooms and casinos.

As a deterrent, the gun has some advantages over a human with a lethal weapon. By engaging from a distance, the risk of physical harm to the user is removed and gives the defender a disproportionate advantage. The intruder stands little chance of winning a fight against a machine and being repeatedly struck by riot suppression rounds is highly demoralizing. Furthermore, the legal risk of using a firearm on a criminal is eliminated. In South Africa, if a criminal intruder is killed the police force must open a docket for murder against the homeowner. This will result in confiscation of their firearms for ballistics tests and a requirement for them to appear in court. Especially if the criminal was unarmed, the property owner may unfairly face significant jail time simply for defending themselves and their land. The sublethal gun requires no license and has a low chance of permanent injury.

 

In the long term a remote gun like this is orders of magnitude less expensive than a human security guard. The guns can be used as a force multiplier to reduce these costs and engage several armed intruders. Especially in the case of farms and homeowners, this may be the only type of weapons system appropriate and affordable. Most do not have the resources to employ 24 hour security.

The up front cost is $1499 per system to include the weapon, controller, rounds, and hardware to mount. Paired with alarm activation on a cell phone or other mobile device, the gun can be made more useful, as unfortunately it is not automatic and requires the user to operate it. The gun works on the cellphone network and does not require WiFi. Through GSM, 4 alarm zone inputs can send an SMS message to the user when triggered. These relays can be used to activate sirens, flood lights, pepper spray dispensers, gates, smoke dispensers and more.

 

While the manufacturer designed the gun as an answer to the problem of crimes against farms in South Africa, it does seem that delivery outside of the country can be arranged. This would of course mean self-installation would be required. The utility of the gun is certainly up for debate, but as an addition to existing security measures and for its relatively low price there is an argument to be made for its use. As an answer to the desire for a remote weapon attached to a camera, the gun might be seen by many as a half measure. Perhaps in the future such a system could be made to detect human presence in off-limits zones and fire automatically.

 

Year 2020: Security Threats in the Coming Year


Moving into a new year, we can expect the trends in information security from the last several years to continue to evolve and affect the methods criminals will use in exploits and the industry’s defenses against them. A few of these, such as the continued migration to the cloud, mobile technologies, and the use of machine learning affect the methods employed by both sides. With a shortage of skilled professionals in cybersecurity and the rapid advance of software development, we can expect serious competition for our data and information security. Here we will take a look at what experts in the field are saying lies ahead in the coming years.

Ransomware

A major method of attack in 2019 was ransomware. While previously online “gangs” would target institutions such as banks in massive multi-million dollar attacks using banking trojans, moving forward it is expected that the focus will shift to smaller attacks on small to medium sized businesses. This is due to it being easier to anonymize smaller attacks, with the profits easier to launder because of less interaction and sharing with physical street gangs in the laundering process.

Phishing 

Phishing will remain an important method in initiating attack, with mobile increasingly becoming the primary vector for phishing attacks aimed at stealing credentials. While conventional secure email gateways are adequate in blocking phishing emails and dangerous URLs, these methods often neglect to defend  mobile attack vectors from account takeover attacks. Personal email, social network accounts, and SMS/MMS messaging can be vulnerable to these attacks.

The Cloud

With business infrastructure increasingly making the move to the cloud, the focus of attackers will follow. This comes with the expected consequence of making attacks more difficult, requiring more sophistication and frequency of attacks which will increasingly rely on luck rather than careful planning and execution. A benefit to corporations using cloud infrastructure is redundancy for data storage and a greater assurance of server up-time. This migration to the cloud should improve security for most, although what attackers will be able to do with machine learning attacks on the cloud remains to be seen.


Having been talked about for several years now, 5G mobile technology will begin to be adopted across major metro areas in late 2020. This increased bandwidth and speed will give rise to a number of new IoT devices and create an uptick in edge computing. With IPv6 adding so many new devices, each one posing a potential risk as an attack vector, companies will need to reevaluate and rethink their threat models. The traditional infosec issues of authentication, confidentiality, authorization, availability and data security will be magnified with the huge build-out of 5G and must be accounted for with an updated risk paradigm.


As for authentication methods, we can expect a move from two-factor (2FA) to multi-factor (MFA), to include biometrics. Implementation of one-time authorization codes (OTAC) will help to provide 2FA circumvention of phishing attacks. Organization are expected to adopt these practices to address credential theft and maintain regulatory compliance, especially those holding highly sensitive data. They will have to contend with more specific phishing attacks leveraging machine learning to optimize attack campaigns. Once done by hand, phishing lures of the 2020s will be tested by AI algorithms in order to improve conversion rates. Phishing domains will even be generated and registered by algorithms independent of human intervention.

Social Engineering and OS Issues

As has always been the case, often the weakest link in the security chain is the human element. We can expect to see an increase of insider attacks in 2020. These occur when an attacker either offers to money or extorts sensitive information from someone working for an organization. This can be achieved through compromising social media accounts and using social engineering methods. This is a low-tech way of breaking security, but often one of the most effective. Some attackers may offer considerable sums of money or cryptocurrency to insiders depending on the target’s position in the company.


One final thing to consider is that Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 7 in the middle of this January. Any businesses and other end-users still using the OS will face the issue of no longer receiving patches and updates, even in the event that a security vulnerability is found. It is expected that at least one significant attack will leverage a Windows 7 end of life vulnerability in the same way that attackers did when Windows XP support came to an end.


These themes will shape the security landscape of the next few years. The interplay between the security professionals and infrastructure meant to protect organizations and those who seek to steal their data will continue to evolve, shaped by emerging technologies. Those organizations best able to defend themselves will be those who anticipate and prepare to resist new and enhanced methods of attack.

STST Inc. is South Texas’ source for professionally designed and integrated security and access control systems.

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