Security Lessons From The White House Turning Off Perimeter Alarm

JH
John Honovich
Oct 03, 2014
IPVM

On the bright side, you are not alone turning off your faulty, nuisance generating alarm system.

On the other hand, the White House got breached for the exact same reason.

As the Washington Post explains:

"An alarm box near the front entrance of the White House designed to alert guards to an intruder had been muted at what officers believed was a request of the usher’s office"

The alarm had apparently been regularly generating false alerts, annoying staff.

A NYC airport had a similar publicized situation: False Alarms are Through the Roof

These events underscore how much of an emotional burden false alarms are even to maximum security facilities.

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Simone de Titta
Oct 03, 2014

Ok John, to whom do I need to make send an offer?.........;))

Joking...... (well, maybe not that much.....;))....)

Cheers,

Simone

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Oct 03, 2014

Last time I heard, ADT was servicing the White House and the Penagon, at least that what the sales guy told me.

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JH
John Honovich
Oct 03, 2014
IPVM

Lol, that sales guy must be back tracking hard now. Wait, what, I didn't say that... No, no, we just do the interior. The perimeter is handled by TycoIS. Yeah....

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Rob Hammond
Oct 03, 2014
IPVMU Certified

The White House incident reminds us all how destructive false alarms are to a security organization. The Secret Service, with their unlimited budget, had no excuse for not fixing the problem. Most of us who live in the real world don’t always have the luxury of throwing money at a problem.

No organization should tolerate high false alarm rates, and they should do all they can to reduce false alarms to as close to zero as possible. We all know what happened to the boy who called wolf too often. Another problem of false alarms is what I call adversarial testing. This is the practice of an advisory will test an alarm system, to gauge the response. A prison warden once told me that they always respond to alarms from their fence monitoring system, because he found that prisoners would periodically test system sensitivity and guard response. Since the prisoners, if you will excuse the pun, had time on their hands, would spread their testing out over weeks and months. One time might be throwing a ball at the fence, the next time might be an “accidental” bumping into the fence.

You should assume that your security system will from time to time be tested by advisories, if a high false alarm rate causes the monitoring staff, not to see the threat, then that is a problem. The worst case is the monitoring staff assuming an actual penetration is just another false alarm, you will soon find out, like the Secret Service director did, how costly your false alarm problem is.

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JH
John Honovich
Oct 03, 2014
IPVM

Rob, good feedback, great anecdote about the prison.

As for organization's reducing false alarms to as close to zero as possible, it certainly is the ideal. However, the White House incident shows how difficult this can be and how fragile / frustrating this can be even for maximum security users.

From time to time, manufacturers try to downplay the problems of false alerts - "It's better than nothing," etc. This incident shows how problematic false alarms are for end users. If the White House will turn it off, what hope do you have the average commercial / industrial customer?

JE
Jim Elder
Oct 03, 2014
IPVMU Certified

This guy should have never reached the front door. By that time it could have very well been too late (what if the bad guy was a suicide bomber?). Whatever the technology used, detection should have occurred during the initial breech of the fence and a “big red button” should be available to electrically secure the doors durning the threat verification process. The 4 Ds of security need be in place here, but early DETECTION (the third “D”) is the key as it allows the security operation to marshal forces necessary to repel the threat. Talk about a basic miss. ...

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Simone de Titta
Oct 03, 2014

Wait, I think we are lacking something here....

Since we are talking about White House or a big airport we are assuming as obvious that they are surely using the best technology available in the market... But sorry: where is it written?...

I think that first of all we should actually investigate about which specific product/technology we are talking about there, before making a generic "lawsuit" to the market of sensitive areas protection technologies....

Is it that impossible that on the contrary actually for some reasons they were just simply using a poor old technology (not necessarly low cost!...), maybe just motion-detection or IR based?.... You can't imagine how many times I saw with my eyes highly critical infrastructures or big famous airports "protected" by useless old stuff.... Don't make me write the names, you would be shocked!....

I don't want to say that there are today technologies with "0" false alarms: this will never happen by definition! But there are today timely reliable solutions available, with not only the ability to limitate the false alarms even in challenging environments but also and above all to reduce to almost zero the management cost of them. Because it's not only the number of false alarms the issue, but actually the main issue is how much each false alarm costs.

If I had for example a system giving only, for example, 1-2 false alarms per year, but its verification meant to need to stand up, to go and to see phisically, maybe far away, maybe without knowing a priori what it generated it (if a cat or a squad of dangerous criminals..), these false alarms would have an extremely high cost and of course I would need to reduce them to zero..

But if instead I have for example an efficient VMS giving to an operator the real-time screenshot of the alert, with a colored bounding box indicating clearly what generated the alert, the verification would be made in 1 second just rising the head on a monitor.. Of course if I had then 1 false alarm per second, this would be an issue anyway........... But I think there's something better in the market today..

Cheers,

Simone

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Rob Hammond
Oct 03, 2014
IPVMU Certified

To be sure, exterior alarm detection is a challenge, and I am unaware of any technology in this field that does not have a “nuisance alarm problem”. That said, there are ways to reduce the alarms, and drive towards the 0 nuisance alarm goal. It all starts with using the appropriate technology for the application, not all technologies fit all applications. The next is having a strong assessment tool. That would be the video surveillance system that automatically displays video of the area of detection, so that the monitoring staff can quickly discriminate between ole Joe the maintenance worker, and an intruder.

A fence is a surmountable barrier, whose job, among other things, to slow down an intruder, and give the security force time to react. In a high profile, high threat environment like the WH, the fence needs to be fitted with the best, appropriately applied perimeter detection systems (and yes - you may need 2 or more technolgies), and then augmented with a strong video assessment system.

However, these systems are just force multipliers, the security system’s most important asset is a well-trained and motivated staff, operating the systems based on well thought out policies and procedures. These security principles are not new, and I suspect are well known by the security professionals on staff at the Secret Service. My guess… somebody asked why these principles were not deployed, and that is why there is now a top job opening at the SS.

As Jim says above, if you can’t stop a half crazed nut-ball with a knife, how do you stand a chance against a team of well trained and committed jihadies?

GW
George Whittaker
Oct 04, 2014

In a high profile, high threat environment like the WH, the fence needs to be fitted with the best, appropriately applied perimeter detection systems (and yes - you may need 2 or more technolgies), and then augmented with a strong video assessment system.

or bicycle racks?

JH
John Honovich
Oct 04, 2014
IPVM

George, thanks for sharing that.

Here's the picture of the new perimeter 'security' measures:

Obviously, the US government could easily afford putting up a more secure perimeter - taller, barb wire, razor blades, electrified, etc., etc.

This shows the importance of aesthetics, even at a maximum security facility.

So, sure, they could turn it into a war front military base style perimeter but this would freak people out. Obviously, the government has decided its more important to make the White House pretty than maximally secure.

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Oct 04, 2014

The last thing they want to do is scare off the secret service hookers.

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JE
Jim Elder
Oct 04, 2014
IPVMU Certified

Rob. Couple of othe critical path issues are design and ongoing testing and reevaluation (I wonder if they do red team exercises?)

JE
Jim Elder
Oct 04, 2014
IPVMU Certified

I see that Southwest Microwave is back. This time the portable units.

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JH
John Honovich
Oct 04, 2014
IPVM

Hi Jim,

Where did you see that? Do you mean these units?

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Simone de Titta
Oct 04, 2014

Yes, they are visible in the picture that you posted: right inside the fence..........

Mobile microwaves, resting on soft grassland....... No comment....

So, exactely as I wrote before.............

JE
Jim Elder
Oct 05, 2014
IPVMU Certified

Yup. Good product (albeit a bit pricy) but they need to be overlapped so there are no dead zones. Cannot tell that from the pic. Just saw these at ASIS in fact.

GW
George Whittaker
Oct 05, 2014

funny they couldn't upsell their buried cable system (or did they)? looks like this one was even designed specifically for gabled white houses.

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Ari Erenthal
Oct 05, 2014
Chesapeake & Midlantic

Wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and say to yourself:

"Security is a process, not a product."

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