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PSIM evolution mirrors change in enterprise risk assignment

This is an excerpt of an article posted on Security Info Watch.

Perhaps no technology solution on today’s market better illustrates how much more evolved the world of mitigating risk is now compared to just a decade ago than that of the PSIM. Global expansion of business, along with socio-economic upheavals that are a reality in the new century have forced the hand of most security directors to move off their traditional reactive stance into a more proactive approach that focuses on defining and understanding the Concept of Operations (Con-Ops) and business needs that are critical for reducing or mitigating risk and defining a better business process.

Making disparate systems work in unison and making sense of huge chunks of metadata requires a category of software that allows for single platform auditing and reporting. So it was the job of middleware developers to integrate these standalone security applications and devices through one comprehensive user interface. Early on it was the Video Management Systems (VMS) software that served as this information aggregator, but as the data and information need progressed beyond simple video surveillance and analytics to much more of a situational awareness and business management tool, the PSIM became commonplace in enterprise-type organizations.

However, as facility and security systems migrate to higher levels of IP-centric interfacing, the advancement of even more complex information management options are hovering on the horizon according to some industry tech leaders.

James Chong, one of the founding fathers of the PSIM movement back in the early and mid-2000s, certainly expects to see the fundamental change in the way users perceive and actually employ PSIM-type solutions in the near future. As Founder and CEO of Vidsys, a leading software developer for security information management applications, Chong has moved away from the term PSIM to something that encompasses his solution’s full capabilities.

“In today’s lingo and perception of PSIM, we feel it doesn’t do justice to where the solution is evolving.  PSIM has never been the end-game of where we were taking the concept or the vision of this solution,” said Chong in an interview at last week’s ISC West event in Las Vegas. “Before 2010 or so, VMS and access control players were saying that it (PSIM) was not a real category but more of a vision.  Today if you ask almost any security professional if they are familiar with PSIM you will have more than 90 percent say yes. Now that is not to say that people don’t have a lot of various opinions about PSIMs, but there is no denying the category is established and accepted.”

That being said, Chong and his team have taken the next step in the PSIM-concept evolution. He insisted that it has been the plan all along to reach beyond the traditional PSIM solution that is recognized today and take that next step into full management functionality.

“The concept of the CSIM – which is converged security that takes into account cyber, IT, physical and electronic security – is not just limited to physical security or video and controls for access, but is a much broader solution….

Reach the full article on Security Info Watch here.

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