American Security Today May 2017 Digital Magazine American Security Today May 2017 Digital Magazine | Page 34

Volume 12
ROBUST THREAT
ALERTING
May 2017 Edition
DETECTION AND
From weather to civil defense and beyond, pre-
cise alerting requires a collection of integrated
capabilities. ASC designs systems with the ca-
pability to detect, alert and monitor threats in real
time.
Severe weather:
• Integrated flood and wind sensors measure
the significance of inclement anomalies, re-
porting and mapping for continuous, up-to-
date alerting.
Civil defense:
• Chemical and radiation sensors offer early
detection, while reverse 911, text alerting,
emailing, Wi-Fi alerting and instant messag-
ing offer multi-channel communication.
Landslide:
• ASC rainfall monitoring and earth movement
sensors provide early detection and anticipa-
tion for landslide events in equatorial coun-
tries around the world.
SIREN HACK ACCENTS CRITICAL NA-
TURE OF EMERGENCY ALERT SYS-
TEMS CYBER SECURITY
In the wake of this month’s municipal emergency
siren system hacking incident in Dallas, Ameri-
can Signal Corporation (ASC) can assure emer-
gency alert system designers and operators, that
the CompuLert™ NEXGen, is designed specifi-
cally
with
cyber security in mind,
provid-
ing protection from
ex-
ternal hacking
at numerous
layers of
opera-
tion.
The
i-
FORCE
by ASC
is
de-
signed
for com-
m u n i t y,
DOD appli-
cations, col-
leges, univer-
sities, industrial, nuclear, petrochemical, or other applications
that require high levels of sound pressure level output with
superb acoustical performance and brilliant voice notification
broadcasting.
• The NEXGen network uses secure SSL
connections to prevent snooping or Man-In-
The-Middle attacks.Sensitive data for the ap-
plication is secured to protect against inap-
propriate user input
• All access to administration features is pass-
word protected and requires admin authenti-
cation, and
• All passwords are encrypted to further protect
from malicious access
Messages exchanged between the server and
clients are also encrypted at application level
using the symmetric Advanced Encryption Stan-
dard (AES). NEXGen protocol messages are
even capable of being encrypted with a custom-
er-specific key.
“Where cloud computation is becoming a real
concern for intrusion into closed systems, NEX-
Gen is capable of working with entirely isolated
network resources, with no dependence on cloud
resources or internet access, aside from an op-
tional NOAA feed,” said Roe.
“There’s a distinct emphasis on top-down secu-
rity that’s imbued into the framework of our en-
tire system. We recognize the security needs of
emergency alert systems and are leading by ex-
ample when it comes to addressing them.”
(City officials confirmed an apparent hacking triggered emer-
gency sirens to sound across the Dallas area. Courtesy of
USA TODAY and YouTube)
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