7x24 Magazine 2015 Spring_6fx

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Security is another industry, among many, that relies
heavily on an efficient control room to achieve its
goals. A security operations center (SOC) is a
centralized unit in an organization that deals with
security issues, on an organizational and technical
level. A SOC within a building or facility is a central
location from where staff supervises the site, using
data processing technology. Typically, it is
equipped for access monitoring, and controlling of
video, lighting, and often, alarms, and can monitor
activity at all campus facilities, including camera
and remote access controls for doors and gates.
The role of the SOC continues to evolve over times
and as events escalate beyond the operations
center, virtual operators are being brought on
board to deal with higher-level security events. By
adding this new virtual element, the SOC becomes
dependent on the people who are called upon to
staff it in times of crisis or need, as well as on the
tools and technology that will provide visibility into
incidents and that will help lead to quicker incident
resolution. Operators may be on the scene of the
crisis, reporting information via mobile
videoconferencing, which is being shared via war
room back at the hub. Another virtual operator
being utilized by the SOC of today is social media.
Mobile connectivity to the control room allows for
sharing of pertinent information about the current
state of security incidents and assist peers in
mitigating attacks. Companies will further benefit
from heightened situational awareness, improved
visibility, and access to a vast knowledge base.
Utility companies are also leaning on network
collaboration to increase their level of
communication. As the sole electric utility for the
island of Bermuda, Bermuda Electric Light
Company (BELCO), is responsible for monitoring
and managing electricity generation and delivery to
36,000 metered connections throughout a 21-
square-mile area. The video wall displays a highly-
detailed, wide-area view of the island’s power grid,
providing real-time data and video on power usage
and availability across numerous workstations in the
operations center — an especially critical capability
during hurricane season and other high-alert
weather periods. The greatest benefit of the new
video wall system is its information-sharing
capability, which enables managers, operators and
customer service staff to simultaneously view real-
time supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) information throughout their computer
network. Another example of collaboration in a
utility company is through PPL, an energy company
headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The
company currently delivers electricity to 1.4 million
customers in Pennsylvania. PPL wanted the ability
to bring real-time data from their OSIsoft® PI
System®, which lived on a separate server from the
rest of the control room.They were able to work
with their technology integrator to create the
firewall technology they needed to bridge the
servers and allow their operators to view a wealth
of additional data that was not available to them
before. This has become an invaluable asset to
their operators in assisting with situational
awareness.
This media-driven age calls for a paradigm shift in
control room operations. The optimum control
room solution features an”any source, anywhere”
networked visualization platform that can handle
unlimited inputs and outputs to deal with the
abundance of data and enable collaborative
decision-making across multiple functions and
geographies. This means presenting information
wherever it is needed — not only on the control
room's display wall and operator workstations, but
outside the control room as well. Today’s control
room design must think beyond the hardware to
access the critical that enable effective
collaboration and the ability to create, combine,
and share various user perspectives of data,
images, and video at any given moment.
Destiny Heimbecker is the Marketing Communications Coordinator at Vistacom Inc. He can be reached at
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