31 January 2024 - Security Buyer Magazine

Veeam Launches Cyber Secure Program

Veeam Software announced availability of the new Veeam Cyber Secure Program which combines Veeam’s purpose-built technology with a team of experts to help enterprises prepare for, protect and recover from ransomware. The new program gives customers further peace of mind. It starts with pre-incident support including architecture planning, implementation assistance, and quarterly security assessments. When there is an attack, customers are connected with Veeam’s dedicated Ransomware Response Team and the program offers post-incident support to enable rapid recovery. Veeam Cyber Secure ensures customers have the assurance that they’re ready and prepared for when a cyber incident occurs. ”We know that 76% of organizations were attacked at least once in the past 12 months, and 26% of those reported being attacked at least four times. Recovery is still a major concern, as only 13% believe they can successfully recover,” said John Jester, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Veeam. “With the new Veeam Cyber Secure Program, we ensure customers are prepared for any cyber threat and when the worst happens they can recover as quickly as possible. The new program is designed to ensure customers follow data protection best practices with Veeam solutions, enabling them to not just bounce back from an outage or data loss, but to bounce forward. By providing the shortest gap between incident and recovery, our customers can keep their business running without disruption.” The Veeam Cyber Secure Program includes incident recovery services like advanced onboarding, design and implementation assistance, and quarterly health checks. During a cyber incident, customers have access to a dedicated Support Account Manager and Ransomware Response Team with 30-minute service level agreements (SLAs). With the Veeam Cyber Secure Program, enterprises are ready for the next cyber-attack and can rest easy knowing backups are clean, reliable, and ready for fast recovery. The new program includes three key components: Confident Security: Attentive and dedicated design and implementation assistance to ensure Veeam best practices in securely implementing Veeam solutions to the highest security standards. Customers receive advanced seven-phase onboarding support and rigorous quarterly security assessments conducted by Veeam experts to ensure Veeam environments stay secure. Comprehensive Support During Cyber Incident: When a ransomware attack or cyber incident occurs, the Veeam Ransomware SWAT team (ransomware recovery ‘black belts’) is available 24/7 with prioritized 30-minute SLAs and ready to deploy into immediate action. Customers have a dedicated Support Account Manager (SAM) for assistance and escalation during this time, as well as access to specialized senior support engineers who combine deep product expertise with key insights from successful enterprise implementations. Financial Protection: Veeam provides enterprises with confidence of rapid recovery from a clean and reliable copy of backup data as the highest security standards are in place, as well as the Veeam Ransomware Recovery Warranty – up to $5 million USD in data recovery expense reimbursement for a verified attack. Enterprises continue to turn to Veeam as the market leader for trusted and reliable cyber resiliency and ransomware protection. Veeam added more than 4,600 new enterprise customers in 2023, contributing to Veeam achieving greater than $1B in ARR for the fifth consecutive year (2019-2023). Read more exclusives and news in our latest issue here. Never miss a story… Follow us on: Security Buyer @SecurityBuyer @Secbuyer Media Contact Rebecca Morpeth Spayne, Editor, Security Portfolio Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922 Email: editor@securitybuyer.com

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Janet Shelley MBE joins Heras

UK News Desk / Rebecca Morpeth-Spayne

The UK permanent perimeter protection solutions arm of Heras has appointed Janet Shelley MBE as a Business Development Manager (BDM) for the company’s servicing and maintenance department. Janet will cover the south of the UK and will target the owners and landlords of public spaces, manufacturing plants, engineering sites, sports stadia and distribution hubs to encourage them to get their access control systems – such as gates and barriers – serviced on a regular basis. She is keen to get the message to the market about the importance of regular servicing and maintenance to both meet regulatory requirements and standards (such as the mandatory European NEN-EN 13241-1 standard and the Machinery Directive) and minimise the downtime on sites should faults or malfunctions occur. “Servicing and maintenance of elements of perimeter protection systems – such as turnstiles and bollards – are often overlooked at the point of purchase because of the assumption that they will last for years before they break down,” said Janet. “But we always use the analogy of buying a brand-new car and driving it for years without servicing it. Yes, it will go for miles and miles, but at some point it will break down – and that will probably prove very costly. “It’s a simple ‘prevention is better than cure’ message to point out that if a sliding gate, swing gate or bi-fold gate, for example, stops working, an entire site’s operations can quickly come to a grinding halt because people can’t enter or leave the site. And for logistics hubs, as an example, this could be disastrous, as such sites have to run like clockwork.” Janet – who received her MBE for services to the construction industry after founding a company that provided training and skills pathways for women into the building industry – is keen to point out that Heras doesn’t just cover its own products: as an industry leader, it can also provide servicing and maintenance solutions for other systems. Her appointment comes hot on the heels of Jacqui Walker and Phil Lafone recently joining Heras as Key Account Managers for the Doncaster-based company, which is Europe’s leading end-to-end supplier of permanent and mobile perimeter protection solutions. Speaking about the raft of new appointments, Heras’s Managing Director for the UK, David Owen, said that Heras now has a team in place that can help the company as it plans for growth. “Heras has been very proactive in putting the right building blocks in place as part of our plan for growth in a challenging marketplace,” he said. “Having the right blend of people in our team is essential, and Janet, Jacqui and Phil have all hit the ground running and added a new dynamic to our UK team. “And progress is on track constructing our new €10M state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at our head office in the Netherlands – which will initially produce sliding, swing and bi-fold gates that will be bound for the UK market as early as autumn this year.” Read more exclusives and news in our latest issue here. Never miss a story… Follow us on: Security Buyer @SecurityBuyer @Secbuyer Media Contact Rebecca Morpeth Spayne, Editor, Security Portfolio Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922 Email: editor@securitybuyer.com

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Invincible keypad, or why you shouldn’t trust what you see in movies

News Desk / Rebecca Morpeth-Spayne

What happens in movies or TV series may never happen in real life. In fact, when it comes to break-ins, robberies, or hacker attacks, movies are full of completely unrealistic things. Often, the highly specialized technicians are not even involved in the filming process to provide proper guidance. That’s how the audience is getting lost in a distorting reality while the experts are painfully confused about such fakes. For instance, the viewers believe some powder can detect IR rays that protect the Holy Grail. Or, they think a burglar can connect a wire to the Ajax keypad, read the password, and hack the security system. We’ve analysed probably the most popular movie break-in — hacking a security system through a keypad. As a rule, it is performed in three main steps: Finding a keypad; Gaining physical access or intercepting a radio signal; Hacking the system through third-party software. Let’s find out what is wrong with each step. Step 1: Finding a keypad The first move in any intrusion attempt is gathering information. When movie intruders enter a building, they know exactly which direction to run and where to look for potentially hackable devices, even if they are on the other side of the wall. While it may seem simple in theory, it is actually quite difficult to distinguish between wired and wireless devices in practice. To determine the exact location of the wired keypad, an intruder must use a high-powered multiscanner to find the right cable hidden in the wall. However, the multiscanner does not identify what kind of cables these are — related to a doorbell, door intercom, or electrical wiring. And with thick walls, a multiscanner can be fully useless. If the keypad is wireless, searching for cables hidden in the wall won’t help. Intruders can try to scan the radio signal to detect the location of the wireless device. Still, the device is allotted a short time frame to exchange data with a hub using the TDMA technology. The rest of the time, their communication modules are inactive. To an intruder, it may take dozens of minutes to pinpoint the signal’s source. And even then, there’s no guarantee that the detected signal source belongs to the intended device. In addition, it might not be an Ajax device, as other devices also use Ajax frequencies. However, to catch the radio signal, intruders use a code grabber. A special device intercepts the signal transmitted when the system is armed or disarmed. But still, it is impossible to hack an Ajax device in this way due to the signal encryption and a proprietary communication protocol. Protection technologies: block encryption featuring a dynamic key, TDMA principle. Step 2: Physical access To attack the security system, intruders always look for physical access to the device. Gaining access should be fast and quiet, even if it needs to drill through a half-meter wall. As a rule, keypads are installed at the entrance. Usually, these are load-bearing walls made of brick, concrete, or reinforced concrete with a thickness of 25 cm or more (depending on the building codes and regulations). Sometimes, it can reach 50 cm, and drilling through it silently in a few seconds is impossible. In addition to attracting the attention of neighbors, there is a risk of damaging the device with a drill. The Fibra line of the wired keypad runs through the cable channel in the SmartBracket mounting panel. Channels have a curved construction, and the cable is fixed with ties. That is why, if intruders drill SmartBracket, they would probably cut off all the wires. Besides damaging the device, users and the Central Monitoring Station (CMS) will be notified of the intrusion attempt. If the cable is damaged, they will receive notifications about a short circuit and ring connection break (if the Ring topology is used). In the case of the cable breaking or the keypad damage, a notification about the loss of communication with the hub will also be received. Even if an intruder tries to damage the security system with electrical sabotage (e.g., using a stun gun), LineProtect Fibra will absorb the impact. All devices between LineProtect and the hub will continue to operate. Wireless keypads simply have no wires. Moreover, there are no wires inside wireless and even wired Ajax keypad enclosures. So, it’s impossible to connect to any wire inside the devices. The only available wire is an isolated and hidden Fibra cable. Some movie intruders tear the keypad off the wall and break it, causing the security system to fail. However, the keypad is just a part of the system but not its “brain”. So, damaging a keypad doesn’t make much sense for compromising the overall security. In addition, the Ajax keypads have a tamper that notifies users and the CMS in case of opening the device enclosure, removing the device from the mounting panel, or detaching it from the surface. Protection technologies: instant notifications, communication loss detection, tamper alarm, LineProtect Fibra, ring connection Step 3: Hacking Assume that an intruder has connected to the keypad and left undetected by the system. As it’s possible only with Fibra, let’s explore this case. Connecting to a single wire, as shown in movies or TV series, makes no sense because the Fibra line has four wires: two signal wires and two power wires. To protect the transmitted data, Fibra uses encryption featuring a dynamic key. Hacking and getting to the data will take the capabilities of a supercomputer and an investment of weeks or even years. In other words, it is a futile effort. However, even encrypted data still needs to be reached. Each communication session between a hub and a device begins with authentication: unique markers and properties are compared. If at least one parameter fails the verification, a hub ignores the device commands. Therefore, there is no point in tampering or intercepting data. The keypad does not store user codes, making it unachievable to obtain codes from it. When the user enters the

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Demand for temporary CCTV towers rises

UK News Desk / Rebecca Morpeth-Spayne

Demand for temporary CCTV towers rises after surge in professional gangs targeting construction sites, says Kingdom Systems. Drastically worsening thefts from professional gangs on UK construction sites has garnered national outrage and prompted many firms across the country to install temporary CCTV towers to deter ‘stealing to order’, say Kingdom Systems. The company, who protect hundreds of construction sites from theft each year, warn about the rise of ‘stealing to order’- where criminals are given a list of sought-after machinery and equipment to then steal and sell on. Temporary CCTV towers can massively help to prevent ‘stealing to order’ crimes and protect businesses that are at risk of losing £800 million every year, according to insurer Allianz Cornhill. Businesses are also desperately waiting for the Government to address this surge, says Kingdom Systems. Last year, the Government brought in the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act to counteract the problem in the agricultural sector, but it fails to address the issue suffered by construction sites nationwide. And with research by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) revealing that a staggering 92% of construction workers are affected by theft, with 21% saying they suffer from it every single week, it’s an epidemic that largely lies in the hands of individual project managers to prevent until wider governmental changes are made. Often, tradespeople and construction workers have no choice but to leave expensive equipment and machinery onsite overnight, making construction sites a goldmine for thieves looking for opportunity. “The serious risk of theft is a concern for all construction site managers and staff, especially when demand for stolen equipment is so high and the costs of replacing them remain equally astronomical. But installing permanent CCTV towers is expensive, time-consuming, and unlikely to be the best option for temporary construction sites,” says Paul Worsley, Director of Service from Kingdom Systems. “Installing temporary CCTV can be an efficient way to enhance security, deter criminals and safely document any breaches or suspicious activity.” CCTV footage from temporary CCTV towers can provide valuable evidence in the event of a theft, speeding up the time it takes to catch the perpetrators. With 34% of tradespeople saying that the thefts have impacted their mental health, temporary CCTV provides that much needed peace of mind for the sector. “For everyone involved in a project, a theft of a considerable amount of equipment or machinery can cause a lot of stress and worry. The idea that professional gangs rather than opportunists are targeting sites without proper security means they need to have a more strategic and effective approach to deterring criminals, beyond just the usual lock and key,” says Paul Worsley. Read more exclusives and news in our latest issue here. Never miss a story… Follow us on: Security Buyer @SecurityBuyer @Secbuyer Media Contact Rebecca Morpeth Spayne, Editor, Security Portfolio Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922 Email: editor@securitybuyer.com

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