4 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Security Management System
Here are a few steps to determine whether Enhanced VMS or PSIM solutions would work best for your campus.
A recent Campus Safety article titled “Managing Campus Security With Integrated Solutions” discusses the differences between enhanced video management systems (VMS) and physical security information management (PSIM) solutions.
Below are some questions to help determine if Enhanced VMS or PSIM is right for your campus:
1. How many and what types of systems and processes do you need to integrate?
Enhanced VMS is a pre-packaged solution that integrates a fixed number and types of systems, and a pre-specified number of processes. With PSIM, the sky’s the limit, as long as your college has the budget to pay for it.
2. Is your dispatch or security operations center responsible for multiple campuses and/or teaching hospitals that have standardized on different brands of legacy security equipment (i.e., are there too many systems to integrate through Enhanced VMS)?
It’s not uncommon for different sites to standardize on different physical access control, video, intrusion, or fire detection systems. Upgrading these legacy systems to get everyone on the same page is expensive and impractical. Using PSIM, universities and hospitals can merge these incompatible security systems into a single interface that makes the underlying technologies totally transparent to a security operator.
3. Do you want to bi-directionally share information with outside agencies?
Many hospitals and universities are embedded within larger urban settings, which means they can’t be fenced off from the outside world. Situations originating beyond the campus periphery can easily spill over to the campus environment. For that reason, a university or hospital might want to use PSIM to bi-directionally share real-time information with outside agencies.
4. Would your campus benefit from integrating other security/safety systems?
PSIM offers the potential for a broader spectrum of integrations to video analytics, mobile apps, building management applications and even blue light emergency phones. PSIM can also integrate with other real-time data feeds, such as early warning information about dangerous weather conditions, fires, hazardous material spills, etc. within a certain campus radius.
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