On The Physical Security Revolution Being Fueled by 5G and IoT
Daniel Bloodworth, Director of Emerging Technologies at Everbridge
Daniel Bloodworth is Director of Emerging Technologies at Everbridge. He operates at the intersection of business and technology, advancing the role of IoT in Everbridge’s Critical Event Management strategy. Daniel is a seasoned security products thought leader and practitioner, having designed and delivered mission-critical security integration projects for over 10 years. Everbridge Technology Blog (ETB) caught up with him to ask about his crystal ball for the future of physical security technologies.
ETB: Can you explain 5G and IoT in a nutshell — knowing that they’re not living in exactly the same “peanut shell”?
Daniel Bloodworth: Absolutely right — but to use your analogy I would say they are ‘different nuts’ that are just growing at the same time in the same area. Many people probably associate the two because both are gaining a lot of public attention at the same time, and of course there is some relationship between them.
Hyperconnectivity lies at the center of both. It’s the idea that anything with potential value in communicating over a network should be doing so. This is effectively the basis for the Internet of Things (IoT), and the value that we can achieve from now being able to easily extract all of that information, whatever it may be, by simply ‘jacking in’ to the network. We are still at the very beginning of learning how to be a hyperconnected people around the world!
For example, many people have probably heard about ‘smart trashcans’ that communicate home with how full they are, so they can be emptied before they overflow. But I recently heard about an experiment where they were adding IoT security cameras to make the trashcans even smarter (smile).
Of course all of the data from these connected devices has to go somewhere, and it has to use a network to get there. That is where 5G and “big data” come in. And just as we saw in the evolution of conventional wired IT networks, as the use cases grow and technology gets ‘smarter’ we’ll find that the amount of bandwidth required to ensure that there traffic jams on the digital highway will increase.
And the same applies with data — we have had databases and have had algorithms to parse and analyze the data held in them for almost as long as we have had computers. The difference now is just volume, which as it does in any walk of life brings some unique challenges. But it’s ultimately just trying to find the ‘best’ way to make sense of a that whole new world where we have exponentially more databases being created and they are being filled up at a pace we have never experienced before.
ETB: So quantity, quantity, quantity. Got it, Daniel.
You’ve been involved in the security industry for over 10 years at the software and hardware level as a technology product leader. What’s changed the most in the last few years?
DB: The digital security industry has definitely grown a lot. Meanwhile the physical security industry tended to always lag behind a bit. For the longest time we saw resistance to things which we take for granted today. For example, IP-based CCTV seemed wild at the time. Ultimately, people didn’t really see it as technology’s job to make physical security easier.
It was ultimately the reason why we created Control Center way back in the early 2000's! The IT industry was innovating and progressing at phenomenal pace, but the physical security industry was standing still — we wanted to shake that up and show that software was going to play a huge role in the physical security of the future.
Many experts believed that there had to be an analog solution to an analog problem. But in the last 10 years we’ve seen the physical security industry start to catch up and embrace technological advances. That’s because, unfortunately, the need for safety and security isn’t really going away. It’s quite the opposite, and the need to make that simpler, more consumer friendly, and more readily available to all is only increasing.
ETB: Times are certainly a’changing — but it’s been a long time coming. As a truly “digital native,” what was your first computer and do you remember the first program you wrote on it?
DB: It probably wasn’t my first computer per se, but the one that I really fell in love with was my beautifully beige Gateway PC. If anyone actually remembers those (smile), the x386 version was amazing. I’ll never forget running to the news stands on Sunday mornings when the those computer programs printed in the weekly circular would come out for the latest installment of an amazing new videogame. It was usually some kind of traveling salesman problem with a touch of Pac-Man thrown into it. I spent weeks collecting that kind of code from newspapers and magazines back in the day.
There was no cloud back then, and so all my own hardware was what actually resulted in the game play. Come to think of it, it was probably the moment that I really understood hardware for the first time. I distinctly remember like a picture in front of me today: coming down the stairs one morning to find my dad really excited to show me that he replaced the x386 with a brand new model!
It was a x486 with a math co-processors with a turbo button on the front of it. Yeah! Unfortunately when the clock speed jumped from 25 to 33 megahertz some stuff that I had spent weeks creating no longer worked — so I kept my x486 in low gear for the most part of that era. (laughter)
ETB: Which kinds of emerging technologies out there, besides 5G and IoT, excite you the most when considering the future of the security space? Any new acronyms to keep watch around?
DB: We’re seeing some pretty cool new advances in things like LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) around security sensing and of course there’s BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), too. Let’s not forget NFC (Near-Field Communications) that’s quickly both pushing to become the new version of RFID (Radio Frequency ID) or for replacing QR (Quick Response) codes. Wearables are getting really interesting (again). Consumers are already familiar with using their phone or even watch to make payments with Apple Pay or Google Pay, so now they are expecting similar capabilities for all things security where you can just tap your device on anything and the system just knows what you’re doing automatically, whether it is a maintenance team checking on a sensor or an employee wanting access through a door.
ETB: My iPhone has LIDAR now, and it’s amazing. And I see QR codes more commonly in the US and Europe now — it’s not just China anymore.
Stepping way back, when we hear the term “smart” applied to TVs, toasters, and popcorn makers, and then when we apply it to the security industry, what should we think about? I know it’s a pet peeve of yours (smile).
DB: There are countless ways in which we can use technology to deliver value in the security world, but all of them are meaningless if the user cannot appreciate that value. The primary application of smarts today for security is actually about making things more accessible. That’s what we should always be thinking about. It’s not just about creating more features or adding voice control to popcorn makers.
One of the biggest challenges is scale. For anyone who has ever tried to set up their own smart-home, they probably faced something similar. It’s really easy to install an individual point solution (system) like a smart thermostat or a smart lock or even a fridge that tells you when you need milk. And each of these can provide ‘smart’ capabilities on their own. But as you start adding more and more of these individually ‘smart’ systems, it can quite quickly start feeling like the dumbest idea you ever had as you try to navigate dozens of different apps or remotes, trying to remember which app does what or which command you need in order to get a certain thing done. At that point, many will often think ‘this was actually easier before.’
Now imagine the complexity of scale when we are not talking about a single home, but a multi-purpose building, or a district, or even a smart-city! This is where the security industry was floundering for quite a long time, with lots of smart systems but very few ways of actually getting the real value out of any of them once you applied them at any scale.
Of course this is where we run into the age-old challenge: some systems work with some solutions, and some only work with others. This challenge has existed almost as long as the concept of platforms itself. We saw it in the IT industry of the 80s and 90s and we saw it in the physical security industry even earlier than that, because every platform vendor invariably wants to maintain an advantage for you to choose their platform over the next.
So how do we ensure that we can pick at will which individual systems we think are going to be useful for us — without getting locked into an ecosystem that will be very difficult for us to break free from once we go down the rabbit hole? That’s the place for new opportunities and where Control Center really shines.
We’ve answered it by creating a platform that has: 1/ the most existing support (integrations) for the systems that you want today, 2/ it’s the platform that brings the most capability by way of increasing the value of each of the individual systems, and 3/ it demonstrates the most openness and future-proofing so you can have confidence that the platformwill do the jobs we want it to do for the foreseeable future. It’s addresses all levels of scale: from smart-home, smart-building, to smart-city.
ETB: Control Center is so cool, Daniel. And so … smart <wink>.
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About Everbridge
Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG) is a global software company that provides enterprise software applications that automate and accelerate organizations’ operational response to critical events in order to Keep People Safe and Organizations Running™. During public safety threats such as active shooter situations, terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical business events including IT outages, cyber-attacks or other incidents such as product recalls or supply-chain interruptions, over 6,000 global customers rely on the Company’s Critical Event Management Platform to quickly and reliably aggregate and assess threat data, locate people at risk and responders able to assist, automate the execution of pre-defined communications processes through the secure delivery to over 100 different communication modalities, and track progress on executing response plans. Everbridge serves 8 of the 10 largest U.S. cities, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based investment banks, 47 of the 50 busiest North American airports, 9 of the 10 largest global consulting firms, 8 of the 10 largest global automakers, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based health care providers, and 7 of the 10 largest technology companies in the world. Everbridge is based in Boston with additional offices in 20 cities around the globe. For more information visit www.everbridge.com
