While much has been written since COVID-19 hit the country hard before this year about the role of security professionals and the generation in reopening workplaces and returning the country to a sense of normalcy, It is seldom easy to know how many of these corporations have had to. After all, it was corporations with offices and source chains in regions around the world that had to make decisions on the fly, as the coronavirus wreaked havoc in China, Europe and, despite everything, the United States.
Although almost all organizations faced some form of adversity due to COVID, the effects were as broad and varied as the disease itself. According to Steven Humphreys, CEO of access response manufacturer Identiv, the pandemic has affected the company from every angle.
“We are global, so we knew what was going on with the chain of origin in China and we have workers in Italy, so as soon as they locked them up, our workers said, ‘We can’t leave the house,’ and our first Array reaction ‘what the hell are you communicating about?’Humphreys said. ” Then, a week later, California closed its doors and now we have sites in Texas, Washington, D. C. , California, Vancouver, Asia and Europe, and as one a doleading closed or opened and replaced its regulations, we had to adapt to one of them. The most important thing I discovered is so vital that we made calls both one and two weeks, all over the world where both one and both get along, and we communicate about what’s happening and where and let other people share what they’ve learned and what works.
Alan Stoddard, vice president and general manager of Verint Situational Intelligence Solutions, says it has become transparent from the outset that COVID-19 would have an effect on its business globally and replace the nature of its operations both internally and externally with customers.
“First of all, as with everyone else, our greatest fear was staying with everyone and making sure we understood what was going to be needed for the fitness and quality of our own employees,” Stoddard says. “It meant keeping other people at home, keeping them off planes, etc.
“But very quickly, our task was to perceive that our role as a security provider was to perceive that security meant other things to other people. We used to focus on physical protection and that was the biggest challenge for us, but now we are in a world in the one that we also want to see as physical security as a challenge, “he says. ” The intruder may not be a bad guy wearing a mask with a hammer, but possibly a microbe or a worker who knows and accepts as true who he has been with. inflamed without knowing it. It actually adjusts the paradigm of how we think about what we do, what is our role as a corporate generation, what we are looking to do in terms of control ourselves, but also how we can leverage it to help our partners and consumers to manage this situation ”.
Pelco CEO Kurt Takahashi acknowledges that making plans for their businesses in the last quarter of 2019 and early 2020 helped them avoid primary disruptions to their home chain. In addition, Takahashi says the company has undergone an elegant transition to remote execution through its employees.
“We are very pleased to see all of our offices around the world seamlessly move to paintings from home,” he says. “Our transition happened overnight, and we processed orders, we won technical calls, and daily operations increased by one hundred percent the next day. we have encountered difficulties with closing borders in various parts of the world, but now this has been resolved and we are pleased to see consumer shipments pass through customs smoothly».
Humphreys adds that the fact that his painters paint from home has not procedurally slowed them down and that they have been able to have their plants, located in California, Vancouver and Singapore, designated as an essential company capable of remaining open.
“First of all, when it comes to communications, you should tell everyone that fitness and protection come first. We’re not going to give in to that. Now let’s communicate how we can meet business needs, because our business has made remarkable progress, “Add Humphreys.
Of course, one of the things that all organizations have had to deal with the pandemic so far is the diversity of regulations from one state to another and from one country to another, while many states have made the most of their savings and have allowed staff to return En masse, others have been stranded, restricting travel to contracts through “essential” businesses or for activities such as buying groceries or eating.
“Whatever the local regulations, you have to comply,” Humphreys says. “Some establishments set regulations and never check, while other regions like Singapore, for example, bring other people for wonderful visits, so let’s do Compliance anyway, because it’s the right thing to do. The demanding situations were talking to everyone and coordinating, so fortunately we used a lot of collaborative tools.
Like Identiv, Stoddard says Verint is a global company and that managing that range from one region to another is an ongoing challenge.
“We have other people running in Singapore, Israel, India, the United Kingdom, South America and various states in the United States and Canada, so one of the first demanding situations was to perceive all local regulations, regulations and needs, and beyond. “That’s exactly what all demanding non-regulatory situations were,” he says. “There was a time in India, for example, they had not yet been insured, but all our staff deserved to have taken public transport to get to the workplace both one and two days and that was not going to happen, so being able to perceive globally and how the other challenge is different from one region to another and identifying express responses for both was the number one challenge. “
For his part, Takahashi says Pelco has migrated to a “soft reopening” of his offices and has also staggered the populations of workers to minimize the number of other people who can join each other to help social distance within their facilities.
“It is a difficult challenge to maintain the wishes of the company while meeting the wishes of all employees; I am very proud that we have not had the need for licensing, layoffs or pay cuts since the transition. I think our workers appreciate it,” he adds.
According to Ryan Schonfeld, founder and CEO of RAS Watch, which supplies Global Security Operations Center (GSOC) as a controlled service it provides to organizations, one of the most demanding situations of its company has been the uncertainty facing its customers.
“For some, it’s not about the long run of their business and some also have monetary problems, which can flagrantly challenge us to get paid,” Schonfeld explains. “At first with COVID, which was the initial concern, then a few weeks after issuing the shelter/quarantine orders, other people began to become more sensible with their projects and things calmed down, but it was about 3 weeks of madness and uncertainty. »
However, being a controlled service, RAS Watch has necessarily evolved according to the wishes of its customers. For example, while many corporations were involved in how they could monitor and their facilities, which are now empty after their sudden shutdown, Schonfeld says they were able to interfere and help organizations with remote tracking support.
While there has in fact been no shortage of new technological solutions, such as temperature detection, which have been put at the forefront as a means to combat the spread of coronavirus in offices and elsewhere, Humphreys says what it implements depends on what I want to achieve with those products, whether it’s to make everyone feel better or to get real mitigation
“Some of those (thermal) cameras, and we’ve tested several of them, they’re just not very reliable,” he says. “They will tell you if the temperature varies, but you may not be given the correct baseline, you may not be given 98. 6; they will tell you if you increase a degree, however, the baseline is very difficult to identify in some of those cameras. We tested several of them and made the decision not to market them. “
In the short term, Humphreys says that many projects that were introduced before coVID’s coup are progressing normally, however, as this pandemic persists, it expects the immediate integration of physical protective equipment into security solutions, i. e. with respect to access control. “Access Control is the most productive platform for fitness and protection, because that’s where you already manage your staff who deserve to be in construction and everything else,” he adds.
On the other hand, Stoddard says that Verint has noticed some slowdown in paintings from existing projects and that others are beginning to perceive that the belief of protection has replaced only securing physical facilities from intrusions to protecting the fitness of an organization’s staff.
“We also want to take a look at that and he’ll be with us for a long time,” he says. “A big component of this is to perceive that these are not data flows; it’s not just about ‘hey, where to install an impenetrable barrier or a security alarm on the door of a chimney’, but we have to be much more nuanced than that. ‘
Unfortunately, Humphreys also believes that the US economy is not a major economy. But it’s not the first time It will also be directed to a recession due to coronavirus and that those who do not have a cost-effective solution will be left out. “It will be complicated if the installation and maintenance of the systems is very expensive. People just can’t tolerate that,” he says.
As organizations seek to spend after the pandemic, Schonfeld says they have also noticed a growing interest in adopting cloud-based and industry-wide services.
“Lately we are in talks with several corporations to take control of some or all of their internal (security) groups that, prior to COVID, were not interested in this option. And it’s not just from the point of view of charges, I think it’s a vital factor, however, I think a lot of other people have learned that there’s no redundancy,” he adds. What if there was a fireplace in the building where your GSOC was located?No one had thought of a pandemic before, but now they are.
With over 20 years of experience in the market, Takahashi says safety is tough and expects everything to recover once the COVID-19 is in the rearview mirror.
“I think we have a wave of innovation ahead of us, which will help everyone adapt to a new way of running and we’ll make sure of the protection and safety we all need,” he says. “If we are in combination, we will grow in combination and help move the economy forward. “
Editor’s Note: As of October 2020, Kurt Takahashi is no longer pelco’s CEO
Joel Griffin is the editor-in-chief SecurityInfoWatch. com and an experienced security journalist. You can succeed in it in joel@safetyinfowatch. com.
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