Lights! Camera! Action!—And Security! (A Perspective from Paramount Pictures) Part 2

SIA Education@ISC West has produced a robust program of education sessions for those attending the biggest security products tradeshow in North America in Las Vegas on April 5-8. (Check out the full schedule and register for SIA Education@ISC West online at http://www.iscwest.com.)

One such fascinating panel will be found in the ISC West Opening Keynote: Lights! Camera! Action! How Paramount Pictures Delivers Enhanced Safety and Global Security While Driving Operational Efficiency and Sustainable ROI on April 6 at 8:45 a.m. in Room 701 of the Sands Convention Center.

There, attendees can hear firsthand from Scott Phemister, Executive Director of Global Risk and Crisis Management for Paramount Pictures; Jeff Reider, Senior Analyst for Global Risk and Crisis Management at Paramount Pictures; and Steve Tiffany, Director of Studio Systems for Paramount Pictures, who will share their success story with the installation of their global physical security information management system (PSIM).

Founded in 1912, Paramount Pictures is America’s oldest-running movie studio and has brought us many successful films throughout the years, including “The Godfather,” “Indiana Jones” and “Transformers.” Upholding the highest standards of business behavior and standards, Paramount also holds its global security operations in the highest regard, deploying some of the best and most innovative solutions. Mickey McCarter of the Security Industry Association (SIA) chatted with Scott Phemister and his team about their PSIM project and what they will discuss at ISC West.

(Read the first part of this discussion from last week!)

Mickey McCarter: You know it’s fascinating that you did this internally! I often hear the conversation about finding a partner to come in and do this sort of integration. But you guys did it yourselves, which is great. I realize you’re a big company but not every company would be able to do that themselves.

Scott Phemister: You have to have good partners. If you don’t have expertise on the back-end side and networking, it would be really difficult to get started. Once it is hooked up and the system is there, building it out can be done if you have a clear vision and knowledge of what you want. You have to have a little bit of technical knowledge but not as much as when you’re setting up the system.

MM: Are you at liberty to discuss your partners? Who were they?

SP: Our PSIM system is from SureView Systems, and the command center module is called IMMIX. Some of the other software includes Bosch for our fire alarm and intrusion systems. We have Senstar for our perimeter alarms. We have Anvil Technologies for situational awareness to provide intel to our global offices.

We have Snaptrends for social media monitoring; D3 for incident management and dispatching; Genetec for video management; PremiSys from Identicard for access control. We also have some homegrown systems. I think that covers most of them!

Steve Tiffany, Director of Studio Systems for Paramount Pictures, can talk more about the I.T. side of the project.

MM: Anything to add, Steve?

Steve Tiffany: It was a pretty successful project because of the good partner we had in SureView. They took the lead on the integration of about 11 systems. My team provided the infrastructure and the software installs, and we also provided direction on the technical design of some of the interfaces. But SureView was key in that they were able to use whatever integration technology necessary, whether web services or email.

So their flexibility and their adaptability made it simple for us to implement this project really in a very short timeframe. They were a good partner to have in the development of those interfaces. We were able to move quickly because Scott had IT resources, infrastructure and personnel ready for them. It was a very smooth project. But having technical resources was important. There are a lot of moving pieces and a lot of technologies involved.

MM: As we are winding down here, might you have an anecdote that gives us perspective on how successful this has been for Paramount?

SP: The first month after we went live, we saw how many alarms went into the system. There were 330,000 alarms that went into the system. Based on our business rules, we filtered out 300,000 alarms. So it ended up being 30,000 actual alarms in one month. Over one month, two operators brought it down to several actionable alarms that came into the system for every three or four minutes. So that made it very successful. And we were banking on that because we’re trying to expand our operations and expand everything as we continue building it out.
We’re going to be receiving more and more alarms so we wanted to be able to do that and have the system manage it so we didn’t have to rely on manpower but rather we could rely on the analytics of the system.

We are in the process of becoming UL-certified. And SureView’s IMMIX PSIM is one of the only systems out there that is UL-certified for central station alarm automation systems.

MM: Impressive! We look forward to hearing more at ISC West.

SP: We will see you there!

For more from the team from Paramount, visit the SIA Blog next week for the second part of our interview! Meanwhile, check out all of the offerings from SIA Education@ISC West and sign up online at http://www.iscwest.com.

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association (SIA).