Author: Martin Grigg
ISBN No: 9780 992 7250 0 6
Review date: 04/05/2024
No of pages: 260
Publisher: Tectec-Press
Publisher URL:
http://tectec-online.com
Year of publication: 21/01/2014
Brief:
Integrated Electronic Security: A Layered Approach
price
£Free as ebook
Integrated Electronic Security: A Layered Approach by Martin Grigg is a wide-ranging, manageable book with the sub-title ‘a consultant’s guide to electronic security systems’. If you have been left frustrated and perhaps embarrassed by a security system that does not do what you wanted and asked for, and more to the point paid for, you will welcome this book.
I would add that the book is for anyone who wants to know what electronic security products can do – which includes installers besides specifiers. Grigg himself says his book is a starting point for those wanting to enter the industry, and a ‘gap-filler’ for those already in it. I would add that even if you are one of those that is not so much interested in how a product works, but what it can do for you, the final chapter ‘a high security scheme’ will give you ideas about how to protect a site from perimeter fence to thermal imaging cameras or ground-based radar detection.
I liked this book and would welcome more from the author, a founder and director of chq security services. Their work has featured in Professional Security magazine, most recently in the January 2014 issue about the London Gateway port, indeed an example of integrated security. Grigg begins by recalling he started 25 years ago as a domestic alarms engineer in rural Sussex, and he keeps hearing claims about products ‘that simply are not correct’. As he adds: “People tell me that their product can see things around corners, or is the ‘best’ product in the industry at video compression.” And, besides false claims (whether made out of ignorance or to make a sale) Grigg also speaks of ‘people designing systems when they are not qualified or experienced enough to do the job properly’. A little knowledge really is a dangerous thing.’
Grigg then sets himself up to fail in style and content, but does not fail: his book is written clearly and while it packs in plenty of words, it has enough illustrations to never look blocky. He takes us through operational requirements and then CCTV (from system architecture and camera types to the ingredients of CCTV, the lens, housings, columns, illumination, transmission, control equipment and automatic number plate recognition, ANPR). CCTV is at the heart of the book because, as Grigg explains, CCTV is the ‘eyes’ of a system and allows you to visually verify – to confirm what is going on so manned security can respond (or, as importantly, not have to bother) and as evidence after the event. Electronic access control follows, and intruder detection; and ‘wide area surveillance’, which he defines as detecting and tracking, or ‘the ability to monitor a large area and provide validated information’ so that Security can respond. Grigg offers the seven Ds – demarcate, deter, detect, delay, determine, displace and detain. He begins by suggesting signage at the perimeter ‘to make it quite clear that this is a secure perimeter and that breaching this fence line will incur a penalty’. For an electronic security man he further defines signs with assurance: are you warning for safety reasons (‘razor wire’) or being more aggressive (‘no unauthorised access beyond this point’).
This book I would suggest is not only for the consultant but the engineer, and Grigg evidently in this book has done what he has been in the habit of doing in his work; giving others detail so that they know what to do, and so that they have any gaps in knowledge – inevitable as technology develops – filled. As Grigg writes: “This book has come about because I feel that the security industry – certainly in the Uk and to my experience, globally – has a high proportion of good people with good intentions but there are so many knowledge gaps which understandably form when technology advances at the rate it has done in our industry.”
Hence the book is about integrated systems, where Grigg feels there is a gap in training. Details can be the difference between a scheme that works (and that is not over-elaborate and expensive) and a scheme that fails. “At best, a poor design will be a waste of money; at worst it could threaten individual or national security.”
One quibble. The book ends with a useful glossary and template documents for commissioning of CCTV, access control and intruder detection, and check-lists for maintenance of systems, but Grigg does not offer any further reading or websites – nothing even about himself or his work. Now it would be understandable if Martin Grigg and his company feel unable to speak about their clients and projects, but it would have been simple to have included contact details – which you can find for yourself on the chq website. That aside, Martin Grigg has rightly and eloquently made the case for a ‘new breed of system engineer’, ‘needed to design, install and maintain a modern surveillance system’. Such a system may include computer networks, besides risk management and understanding of data storage. This book, then, will repay reading by IT and facilities management people who want sites securing and maybe with CCTV, access control, intruder alarm and other equipment that can do non-security things also.
