CriticalArc on the AUCSO Conference and University Security
SecurityNewsDesk recently spoke to Glenn Farrant, CEO of CriticalArc, on their sponsorship of this year’s Annual AUCSO Conference, and how they are tackling the current challenges facing university security.
CriticalArc, well known for its innovative command and control solution SafeZone™, will be headline sponsoring the AUCSO Conference for a second year running – an event that Glenn Farrant is very proud to support.
“We are committed to being involved in the AUCSO conference annually and the university security community in general,” he said. “AUCSO is one of the
two leading bodies for university security globally. With the focus on the UK and Europe, whilst also being inclusive of university security practitioners from around the world, it is probably the most open but focused conference of its type.”
The 32nd Annual AUCSO Conference will be held April 5th – April 7th 2016, at the University of Salford, Media City. With a variety of guess speakers, 33 exhibitors and a variety of delegates from around the world due to attend, it is set to be a great event. For CriticalArc, Glenn explains that the conference is a great opportunity to meet with university representatives and engage in education sessions, both of which aid the company in understanding the latest security challenges and, in turn, maximise value within their own technology.
At this year’s conference, CriticalArc will be unveiling new capabilities around the integration of wearable technologies for managing safety, discussing the implementation of indoor positioning technologies and sharing knowledge of how their customers are changing the way they are using technology to make their institutions safer and more secure. “Of particular focus,” says Glenn, “is how SafeZone is changing the way widespread, critical incidents are managing in real time across open, complex environments.”
SafeZone is CriticalArc’s high-performance cloud service that delivers distributed command and control to security coordinators and real-time situational awareness to responders in the field, transforming their capacity to respond in any situation. The solution has significant value to campus security, with the demand for the service surging throughout universities across the world over the past few years. “SafeZone feels as though it was built to solve many top-priority problems in managing security and safety specifically at universities,” said Glenn.
“From adapting to response protocols at various campus locations, providing mechanisms to manage the safety of 1000s of people in the event of an emergency, giving solutions to people with disabilities, allowing practical management of lone worker safety, through to delivering mechanisms for optimising the operations of security teams—there is value to be found across the whole organisation.”
In the run-up the the conference itself, Glenn said: “With a comprehensive solution like SafeZone, it can be applied to address many challenges faced by a university, so we find value in almost all aspects of the conference. However, our interest in the conference this year will be somewhat focused on the challenges of widespread critical incident management, plus the practical implications of securing distributed, disparate environments (even internationally).”
Looking generally over the next year, and the future of security at universities, Glenn said: “Managing the security on a typical university campus is a herculean task that is usually undertaken by teams containing too few people.” He continued, “I’d hope for our partners in universities that there would be a greater appreciation of this at the university executive level, especially on those too-frequent occasions where the university expands its estate without investing in proportional resources to manage it.”
The 32nd AUCSO Conference will be held April 5th – April 7th, University of Salford. For more information on AUCSO and their upcoming events click here.
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