Who's Going to Answer the Call?

I skimmed the surface of Help Phone use a few weeks back. Since then, I've had to dive into a few more specific issues that I think may be beneficial to share. 

Aside from the issues you have to wrestle with when it comes to ADA compliance, equipment maintenance/testing and proper deployment - the single largest factor to success I think is your monitoring and response set-up. This can be as simple as ringing to your security console or dispatch (if you're lucky enough to have one) or it could be as complicated as contract alarm monitoring with cascading ring-down plans. 

With Help Phones, you are giving everyone in physical proximity the option to interact with the device and communicate directly 

with someone who should be able to help them if it's needed. If you've got a security operations center that monitors these phones, you already have a good base to make sure you can handle the phones successfully. Problems grow quickly once you try to use Help Phones in public spaces that are monitored by municipal police departments, 911 call centers, operators or security monitoring companies. That is - if you can get the municipal agencies to monitor them in the first place. 

On one hand, they are just like a pay phone. Even though you don't see pay phones much anymore, at one time they were thrown across the landscape and all of them dialed 911 without requiring payment. That is exactly why I'm confused by the way I'm seeing 911 call centers stonewall the idea of monitoring Help Phones. I know it's been a few years since pay phones were everywhere, but I can't imagine the call center's configuration changing that drastically. With the increase in new technologies such as VoIP and GIS integration - I know analog systems are getting dusty but they should still work. In the meantime, when we are waiting for municipal 911 centers to decide if they will accept help phones there are handfuls of parking garages, lots and jogging trails who's help phones are covered up with plastic bags. 

I think most security practitioners assumed it was a given for the municipal 911 centers to monitor the phones based on historical use of pay phones. Conflicts in technology are always possible (and that's what is referenced for this post ) - but it's fairly easy to overcome that problem so I can't buy that as an excuse. I just think the call centers are falling into the same "municipal thinking process" that's all too familiar. 

Solution? Hopefully call centers get on board quickly. In my mind they should be looking past voice communication technology anyway and start looking into SMS, Text Messaging, Twitter and other communication methods as the next level so this should be old news. 

But - if I were in the security monitoring business I'd definitely look into providing Help Phone monitoring services. It's not the best solution, but if you've got solid methods of coordination with local law enforcement and security forces there should be no reason it can't be done. 

Healthcare Security Roundtable

Security Magazine and SDM (both products of BNP Media) published their "Solutions by Market" segment last month on healthcare security. I was part of the roundtable discussion that was used for The Best Medicine article.

All and all, I think many good topics were covered. If you are involved in healthcare security I'd definitely check it out. They did cut out a few chunks of my statements in the written article which I think make me sound a bit on the rambling / mumbling side but I've been butchered much more in the past!

Big thanks to everyone who's contacted me with comments and congratulatory wishes - I enjoy participating in things like this when I hear that it's useful to others.

The Dipshit Factor

Even though last weeks botched attempt to firebomb a UCLA researcher's vehicle barely made headlines, I think it's worth looking at.

Botched attempts are nothing new, and there are numerous reasons activists get it wrong- ranging from bad information to pure incompetence. And you can bet that as soon as it's reported that they made a mistake, they accuse the targeted organization of lying. But I think I was a little surprised at the nature of the group claiming responsibility and the language they used in their "communique".

"Students and Workers for the Liberation of UCLA Primate Center" sounds like a respectable enough organization on the surface. Names like that give the general public the impression that the activists are legitimate crusaders for a valid cause. But when you mix reckless destruction in the name of activism with inexperience and incompetence it's a disaster waiting to happen. I think this is a perfect example of how faulty the thinking is behind these groups and illustrates how some of the people who scream about researchers with irresponsible practices are even more irresponsible themselves.

My point in all this has a lot less to do with the right and wrong behind the topic - and a lot more to do with reminding people to consider the "dipshit factor".