Dear Readers
A tiny news item caught my eye recently. It was about a gang of thieves that have found an innovative way to steal. They go around posing as technicians and guess what they steal? Its fire alarm systems that they target!
There have been two reported cases this year. 30 smoke detectors, worth Rs. 70,000, were stolen from a central government office in Goa. Then there was a reported theft from Fortune Hotel in Panaji when 62 Smoke Detectors and 3 hooters worth 2 lakhs went missing. The thieves, in this case impersonated as technicians servicing the fire detection and alarm system of the hotel!
I find this rather amusing, as fire alarm systems are supposed to be operational round the clock, their entire circuitry is supposed to be supervised, which means if someone was to twist and remove a fire detector from its mounting base in an operational fire detection system then the alarm should immediately ring. Obviously, this means that the system was not operational in both these cases, alternatively if the system was disarmed by the thieves before the sensors and hooters were unplugged, it means that the thieves were familiar with the workings of a fire alarm system, which brings me to think that perhaps it is high time that system integrators should have the antecedents of their staff verified before they send them out to their clients’ premises for installation and servicing jobs.
In March this year, the much touted safe city project of Ludhiana suffered an embarrassing moment when the CCTVs, that were supposed to help catch criminals, themselves became the target of thieves! Four cases of batteries and operating equipment of CCTVs being stolen had been reported by the company that installed the city’s video surveillance system. News reports say that the company got to know through sensors that the cameras were tampered with at four different locations. The news report also says that the equipment in which footage from cameras of those four locations were stored have also been stolen. Hence, the police cannot take help of the recordings to identify those behind the act.
This makes me think and ask a few questions. Was it wise to mount the camera UPS at vulnerable locations so that the thieves could reach them easily and without being detected? Was it not possible to design the system in such a manner where the weather-proof housings that housed the batteries, uninterrupted power supplies and the NVRs, were difficult to reach? Couldn’t the equipment housings themselves be protected by tamper sensors that apart from raising alerts in the control room also sounded a local alarm to scare away the thieves? The thieves, obviously, were petty criminals, out to steal the batteries and other accessories and sell them off for a few hundred rupees.
It’s high time that the consultants and the designers of electronic protection systems start thinking in greater detail, keeping in mind the environment where the devices have to be actually mounted and build in the adequate protection measures to protect the field devices both against malicious acts as well as from the vagaries of the weather and the environment itself.
I believe that the panelists of the session on Risk-based System Design should devote some time discussing these aspects at the SECURITY UPDATE Business Summit being held at the Sheraton, New Delhi on May 13, 2017, an event focused on the automated protection systems industry.
Till we meet next month, stay safe and keep others safe.
G B Singh
Group Editor
Email: gbsingh@1stasset.org
Follow me on @EditorGB
Connect with me on Linkedin.com/in/gbsingh9
