G4S Technology – USA

Technology Service Center

The Challenge: G4S Technology made the strategic decision in 2008 to develop a centralized service hub, the Technology Service Centre (TSC), to augment their traditional security services with a suite of high value interactive monitoring services.

To realize this goal the TSC needed a software platform to monitor a heterogeneous set of access control, video, audio, and traditional intrusion equipment located across the US in support of their customers. In addition, a web portal was needed to allow clients and organizations to access reports and recorded video clips on their sites.

Background: G4S is the world’s largest security company, founded in 1901 and employing 620,000 people worldwide.

The plan for the TSC was to use video monitoring  as a force multiplier for their onsite security officers. Traditional onsite security can be limited by geography, or the size of the property being protected. With video event monitoring, their actions can be directed remotely to where they are most needed. In effect, they can cover more ground with less effort.

Traditional video monitoring was concerned with forensic detection of events after the fact; who broke in? and how can we identify and find them? In an effort to solve these issues, operators typically would try and watch a ‘wall of live cameras’ and hope they would catch an incident in progress. With remote video event monitoring advanced alarm detection is deployed in an effort to catch criminals while they are still in the process of committing a crime.

The TSC monitoring services and capabilities focus on the more advanced and growing effectiveness of this off-site video monitoring. In addition to traditional monitoring, the monitoring center can apply behavior recognition algorithms which detect behaviors in live video streams that threaten safety, alerting staff for immediate response.

The Solution: The TSC identified the UL listed Immix platform as the most, stable, secure, and robust platform to address their customers’ issues, while remaining vendor agnostic.

From the center’s conception, it was designed around the use of the Immix platform. Originally built in 2008 around using Immix Enterprise, they upgraded to Immix Central Station (CS) in 2013 to take advantage of its advanced web interface and videowall capabilities. The multivendor capabilities of Immix allowed them to expand their product offerings as the company added new integrations. In some cases, products that were not originally compatible were developed for their use to meet specific needs of their customers.

Immix provides G4S a platform to standardize the services they offer through the TSC. Whether its detecting crimes in progress or offering remote guarding services, the TSC can efficiently scale to meet the demands of their customers. The remote monitoring services offered by G4S through Immix include:

• Response to advanced video analytic generated alarms and events
• Scheduled and ad-hoc video guard tours
• Video and audio chaperoning of employees
• Lobby management
• Intrusion alarm detection
• Remote monitoring and access control of gates and doors

Results: Not only has Immix provided a dynamic platform for offering a range of monitoring services for the TSC it has also delivered the following benefits for:

• Customers – can log in anytime to the TSC Immix web portal and access their own video and alarm data.
• Installers – login while onsite to check camera views and lighting to ensure their system is optimally configured for monitoring in the TSC.
• TSC operations
  • Disparate devices are associated with trigger/response relationships within Immix, eliminating the need for expensive “black boxes”, custom software integration or complicated onsite rewiring.
  • Security response are standardized through the use of enforceable SOP’s.
  • The Dashboard gives an “at a glance” look at operator performance.
  • Every action taken by an operator is tracked in a time/date stamped multimedia audit trail, providing a critical tool for post event analysis and investigations.
• IT management – Immix is easy to manage and deploy, eliminating the need to maintain and support PC client installations.

“The partnership with Immix has enabled us to provide our customers with a very friendly, slick looking web interface and allowed us to protect our customer assets without requiring their investment in a homogeneous hardware platform upgrades. The range of supported products is great, and new or improved integrations are coming out all the time. It is unique in the monitoring software marketplace.”   – Chris Blake, Operations Manager for the TSC