Homework Responses Wk 6

Please prepare a response to each of the attached documents for total of 4 responses. The responses need to be at least 150 words each. The responses should be as if you are talking directly to the person.

Due in 30 hrs.

Access control systems (ACS) are essential to any security program.

 

The programs are there to allow access for authorized personnel while preventing or detecting entry by unauthorized individuals.  The ability to accurately identify those accessing a facility or sensitive location will only aid in the security posture of any organization.  ACS systems work in conjunction with many other systems.  Those include Defense in Depth security systems including alarms and detection systems, fire and safety systems, emergency management, and building management.  There are a several features to utilize on an integrated access control system.  Security staff at entry locations and/or monitoring closed-circuit television cameras that overwatch these locations work with ACS systems. 

Identification can be aided at access control points utilizing identification cards and biometric technology.  Biometric technology can help ensure identification by utilizing individual characteristics of a person.  There are several types of biometric identification in use today.  Those include facial recognition, retina scan, voice recognition, hand geometry, and fingerprints.  Each of these methods have their own advantages and disadvantages.  It is prudent the security manager carefully selects which biometric system to use based on the security plan and the needs of the organization.

For access into a sensitive area, hand geometry is a biometric technology that can be employed.  This emerging technique has advantages and challenges to providing security.  Hand geometry uses geometric measurements of a hand features for identification.  The features measured include hand length and width as well as finger width and length. This technique is relatively simple to collect measurements while being minimally intrusive.  One concern of biometrics is false positives or false negatives.  Hand geometry offers simple remedies to false readings by applying significant lighting for improved had readings.  Verification of hand readings can be conducted quickly to allow fast verification of identification. However, there are some challenges to using this technology.  Dirty settings can make hand geometry verification difficult.  The security manager can ensure proper maintenance is applied to address this concern.  In addition, hand geometry can be expensive.  Due to being a new technology, scanning systems are proprietary and require a significant amount of physical space for equipment. 

 
 

References

Asha, S., & Chellappan, C. (2012).  Biometrics: An overview of the technology, issues and applications.  Retrieved from 

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.736.1587&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Smith, C., & Brooks, D. (2013).  Chapter 7: Integrated Identification Technology. Retrieved from https://web-b-ebscohost-com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=f1ec6532-0a94-4ce1-8600-8e0c5c3324b4%40sessionmgr101&ppid=pp_153&vid=0&format=EB

 

Technological advancements flooding the security industry are beneficial to the protection of critical infrastructure and assets. However, execution of applying such devices require an educated security manager that can extract the most benefit from, often various integrated systems. Smith and Brooks (2012) support this by stating an emphasis on the context of the security in necessary for technology to be applied within a security management strategy (p. 154). Technology is frequently used to fill gaps of security programs or enhance security in high security or critically defined areas. One of the most used Defense-in-Depth strategies used is access control. This strategy protects assets by reducing access by unauthorized personnel.

 

Smith and Brooks (2012), ultimately confer the role of access control systems (ACS) is to deter, detect, and delay intrusions while facilitating a response (p. 158). While there are many aspects that can be incorporated into an ACS, I have found a few that I find essential to maintain integrity of the system. First and foremost, a physical security assessment of the facility is primary to any access control system. Identifying high security areas and providing a desired “traffic pattern” of both visitors and employees. Within the employee roles, I would also identify levels of security clearances. This includes but it not limited to control panels, access points, card readers, cameras among other devices. This will ultimately identify what access control measures are employed and where.

Once the base system is designed, establishing a badging station with dedicated personnel to manage the issuance and termination of badge activity. This will help manage that only active personnel have access to the facility. For identification purposes, all employees will have an updated picture placed on their badge and will show up for all “swipes” performed on the system. Additionally, I will establish a mandatory display policy of all employees. Clients or visitors will also be issued a visitor badge and must be escorted by an employee at all times while in the building. The employees will be responsible for all visitor badges.A base station that handles access control and security monitoring will dispatch security personnel for any alarms that may occur. This would include intrusion alarms, door forced open alarms, door held open alarms, etc. This would give the security staff monitoring the facility a bird’s eye view of activity within the facility. Overall, this framework will give a decent starting point for an ACS. While access control measures can be a powerful DiD tool, enhanced methods may be used for higher security areas. Biometrics is uses biological traits to identify individuals (Smith and Brooks, 2012, p. 163). Additionally, biometrics can increase the level of security to an area. Traditional biometric characteristics have been fingerprints and retinal scans, however there have been improvements to include other identifiable elements such as voice identification and hand vein patterns. 

Biometric use can be expensive to install and maintain, so utilization of this protocol should be used sparingly if budget constraints are an issue. With this in mind, I would personally use biometric to secure highly sensitive information or where high levels of security are needed. An added benefit to using biometric measures in limited capacities, is that the access pool may be considerably smaller and thus will be managed easier. Overall there are several ways to implement access control elements. And while many are very good, establishing how and what to implement based on the specific environment is the key to a well-rounded system.

V/R

Corey Overcash

 

References:

Gams, M., & Tušar, T. (2007). Intelligent High-Security Access Control. Informatica, 31(4).

Smith, C., & Brooks, D. J. (2012). Security Science: The Theory and Practice of Security. Burlington: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Zuva, T., Esan, O. A., & Ngwira, S. M. (2014). Hybridization of bimodal biometrics for access control authentication. International Journal of Future Computer and Communication, 3(6), 444-451. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7763/IJFCC.2014.V3.344

For my research proposal I chose the topic of security management, more specifically, how the studying of the history of security management significantly impacts the effectiveness of those who practice it. At first I was very confused on how to go about this assignment, I had never done one before and turned out I was way off from the start. So I went back to basics and looked at how I conducted my research. I used a qualitative approach at first to delve into the history of security management. I went back at documentation of attacks and how had they been managed more properly they could have been avoided. Then I went to a more quantitative route and looked at the statistics of similar attacks and reviewed the logistics and casualties to come up with my purpose statement. My odd topic for a proposal led me to use some interesting research instruments. I started with first hand accounts of world and military leaders’ choices and mindsets at the times, this I consider to be an observation. An observation is a first or second hand account of events taking place. Then once I went into the numbers and statistics of my research I went to using old and newer surveys that had already been conducted. Surveys aid the researcher by gathering quantitative data to assist with displaying the quantitative aspects of their proposal.

Blog, F. (2019, July 23). 7 Data Collection Methods & Tools For Research. Retrieved December 09, 2020, from 

https://www.formpl.us/blog/data-collection-method

Good morning everyone. I hope you are all having a wonderful week. I cannot believe we are almost done with week 6.

I based my experimentation process from past research conducted by Stefan Cremer and Claudia Loebbecke, published instruments.  Within their project, they are trying to show the need to integrate artificial intelligence within imagery analysis. The Azure Cognitive Services from Microsoft are able to contain applications encompassing “decision-making, speech, language, vision and search” (Cremer, 2019). Similar to humans, this type of AI has the ability to process facial recognition, emotion, image classification, etc. With the services from Microsoft, they are able to harness the power of all those skills, and produce a product with all of the data and descriptions. The control here are the images that will be uploaded to be analyzed. They are generic thumbnails taken from certain resources to provide good experimentation data. With my argument, I am reaching that this tool should be used across the intelligence community, so if I were conducting this experiment, I would change the pictures to be that of SARs, sensor generated, etc. That would be a modification in terms of tools. I would also implement analysts with similar qualifications and experience to see what they pull from the pictures, and do a comparison.

The data being collected is contains both quantitative and qualitative information. The time it took to process, what it did process, and how it categorizes the picture can be pulled from the software application being uses. In terms of validity, the comparison of the human generated analysis and the artificial intelligence generated analysis, it would center around criterion validity. In order to prove the content validity, there would have to be some research conducted and published within the research paper about the applications from Microsoft. For research reliability, since I am basing this experiment off of experiments done before, I can see what consistent results work, and what issues arise in the process. Test-retest is another instrument that would be useful, to ensure that each decomposition of the pictures is true, and that the data does not change.

Works Cited

Cremer, S., & Loebbecke, C. (2019). Artificial intelligence imagery analysis fostering big data analytics. Future Internet, 11(8), 178. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy1.apus.edu/10.3390/fi11080178