Cyber security and physical security grew up at different times and in different neighbourhoods. In fact, long before digital transformation was even a concept, physical security had staked out its corporate territory and was on the job protecting the company’s people, buildings, and other assets. Then, as the business world grew increasingly more reliant on information technology, digital security started flexing its muscles on its own turf.
Today’s divided approach to cyber security and physical security has put many companies in a disadvantaged position when it comes to preparing for and responding to events that threaten both physical and digital assets. Just as companies are taking on transformation initiatives to break down silos residing within data repositories, IT systems, business units, regional offices, and more, visionary business leaders are realizing that they need to take a unified approach to critical event management regardless of whether the event threat is physical, digital, or both.
Digital and Physical Security Go Hand-in-Hand
Today, threat profiles are getting increasingly difficult to categorize. Many physical threats like extreme weather and natural disasters can be equally catastrophic for physical assets and digital systems alike. Many cyber threats like phishing and ransomware attacks compromise digital networks which, in turn, may lead to cyber attackers controlling the company’s physical systems. So, these days, it’s not physical security OR digital security; it’s physical security AND digital security.
How Does Merging Cyber and Physical Security Improve Efficiency?
When a critical event occurs, regardless of the cause or the potential impacts, companies have a duty of care to keep their people safe and the organization secure, both from a physical plant and a digital infrastructure perspective. Security personnel must be able to respond to all critical events according to a consistent set of operating procedures.
During a crisis, security personnel need to
- Understand what is happening
- Determine who or what may be affected
- Assess the relevance and relative magnitude of the threat
- Respond accordingly
- Communicate clearly
After the critical event has passed, security personnel need to
- Analyse their actions
- Learn from their response so that they are even better prepared to respond to the next critical event
Full visibility of the threat and its impacts is imperative. Being able to integrate risk frameworks, business processes and crisis response enables teams to view both physical safety and digital security as clearly as possible. Integration and centralization allow for expedited management of incidents as they emerge, and fuel continued operational resilience.
Everbridge: Your Partner for Critical Event Management via Intelligent Automation
Regardless of whether an enterprise deploys a fusion center or maintains a more traditional approach to physical and digital security, a manual approach to crisis response is completely inadequate. Organizations need automated tools engineered to increase enterprise resilience. To capitalize on the disparate yet relevant data available to inform swift and decisive action against critical events, Everbridge can power a fusion center for business with its Critical Event Management (CEM) platform. CEM leverages intelligent automation and helps enterprises protect what matters most.
Everbridge CEM aggregates and analyses pertinent data and automates myriad crisis response processes to assess risk and locate affected people and assets, so you can act faster with greater confidence. The components of the CEM platform help drive continued optimization of your organization and its operations:
Everbridge CEM is the fusion center software for emergency preparedness and response that thousands of private sector companies and public sector organizations rely on to keep their people safe and their businesses running.
To learn more about the benefits of an integrated approach to cyber and physical security, read the Bridging the Digital and Physical: A Unified Approach to Critical Event Management white paper.