Despite being the nerve center of physical security operations, and the center of information and decision-making in emergency situations, the Security Operations Center, or SOC, as well as the Physical Security Department in general, are usually treated as cost centers. This is unfortunate because the data that is collected and generated by physical security systems can provide a wealth of value that should be considered during the process of deploying these systems and put to use in an ongoing way to add value to the organization.
To capture and make use of enterprise-level data, it is a necessity to implement an automated system to sift through the inputs and help security managers make actionable decisions. The purchase and implementation of such an automated system will be scrutinized, of course, so it is important to understand what values the system will offer and how they can be formulated into a measurable ROI. Without planning for capturing physical security data and understanding how to capture the measurable ROI, the security department will remain in a reactive, chaotic state – much as a crew would be if they tried to navigate a ship without a compass.
Moreover, without a clear plan for ROI, it will be much more difficult to convince the senior leadership to invest in physical security automation solutions, as such investments will only be viewed as costly and unnecessary expenses.
In many cases, organizations don’t have a clear case for what parts of their security systems are working well, and what parts are not working well, until they start measuring the meaningful factors. And this lack of clarity can also contribute to senior management scepticism when budget time comes around.
Does this situation sound familiar to you? Are you considering an investment in physical security automation solutions? To be successful, you will have to understand your current situation and present a clear case for ROI to your leadership to gain their support for implementing data automation. We can help you gain this buy-in! Read on - this is exactly what we will cover in this post.
Benefits of Data Automation for Physical Security
SOC Automation solutions offer a substantial list of benefits, including the following:
- Drastically reduce false alarms, reducing operator distractions and letting them focus on true events of interest
- Eliminate manual alarm detection and logging by replacing it with AI-driven automatic alarm detection and logging
- Receive AI-driven recommendations for action based on automated monitoring of hundreds of thousands of data points
- Reduce maintenance timeframes and costs by automating service tracking and leveraging AI-driven adjustment recommendations
- Automate service ticket creation and prioritization, while gaining detailed data-driven recommendations for fixing devices faster and at a lower cost
- Automatically monitor and optimize thousands of security devices – eliminating manual tasks such as updating settings and unnecessary guard dispatches
- Automatically detect faulty security devices, including incorrect setup settings to eliminate these annoyance alarms
- Eliminate time-consuming manual data analysis associated with operator performance reviews
- Monitor compliance against service level assurances and key performance indicators in real-time
- Measure the real-time performance of team members and the SOC as a whole, including MTTA alarms, MTTR, critical alarms by site, and more
- Use AI to ensure the quality of alarm responses and adherence to response plans
As this extensive list clearly shows, relying upon manual efforts to achieve these measurement and assurance goals is enormously time-consuming and expensive. In fact, it is so cumbersome that in many organizations these tasks are never completed properly. By automating these tasks, not only does the organization get a clear view of the facts, but the operation itself becomes far more effective – allowing operators to focus on the real issues that will benefit the most from their attention.
And, by capturing and analyzing the actual performance of the department, it becomes possible to more accurately measure the ROI from physical security systems, optimize resource allocations, make better and more informed decisions, and maximize the overall returns on security investments.
Start with the Right Data
Now, to get these benefits, not just any data will do – it has to be the right data. Many organizations do not have a clear understanding of all the data they currently have, because it is distributed across a range of systems, silos, and locations.
Vector Flow works to fix this situation by collecting the data from the relevant systems, messy as it is, and then standardizing the data so that taken as a whole the existing and new data can be mined for meaningful and actionable insights. You do not need to be a data expert to implement our improved data-driven systems, we take care of that part to make your experience better and give you the insights you need.
How to Measure ROI
To understand, calculate, and measure the ROI benefits of SOC Automation, we need to determine:
- The cost of manual security operations (that is, without the automation)
- The anticipated cost of these operations with SOC Automation
Vector Flow has developed an ROI Calculator that can assist you with collecting these values and making the comparison; find it at: vectorflow.com/ROI
Most organizations start this process while their operations are manual, so the answer to #1 above will reflect the current status of the team. The current costs of manual security operations fall into three primary categories:
People: Personnel costs are a major part of the security budget. You can enter this in the ROI calculator under “Hourly (fully loaded) cost of your SOC Operator”
Process: Here we are looking for the average time that is required for an operator to resolve an alarm, including the time to acknowledge the alarm, collect and review the details of the alarm, investigate the relevant video and other information, dispatch an officer, enter comments, and complete the incident report. We see typical values here of 5 to 20 minutes per alarm response – capture your value in “Time take by your SOC Operator to resolve an Alarm”
Technology: Capture the scope of your SOC with values that cover all your staff and the alarms they process on a daily basis, no matter where they are located. These are captured as “Number of SOC operators that are part of your security Alarm response” and “Number of Daily Alarms received globally across all SOCs”
Completing the Analysis
The best results for any security investment will accrue when the organization’s objectives are clear, well-aligned, and supported by the right data and information. The ROI calculator described above will get you partway there, and these steps will finish the analysis:
- Evaluate the initial investment costs and ongoing expenses associated with maintenance, training, and upgrades.
- Understand the total cost of ownership (TCO) and compare it against the benefits achieved, so that you can make informed and data-backed decisions regarding resource allocation and optimization
Summary
Manual processes are, by their nature, error-prone and time and labor inefficient, which also means they are cost-inefficient. Automated solutions help organizations make the most of the labor resources that they have. For example, instead of operators chasing down false alarms, automated solutions aggregate both historical and live data from physical security devices to mathematically reduce false alarms. In this way, SOC operations can reduce the time between detection and response, prevent alarm fatigue, and enable operators to spend their time proactively resolving real alarms. SOC Automation can help your team do more while saving money.
Reviewing the current SOC costs, resolution times and scope will help clarify the current costs and the basis for those costs. Comparing these with the potential time savings, increases in productivity and effectiveness, and reduction of errors associated with implementing an automated data solution will help security managers make the best possible decisions, and gain the buy-in of their leadership.
