Product Features

Accounts

Accounts include all or any portion of a physical complex, including structures, equipment, grounds, roads, parking lots and the interior and exterior of any buildings that are monitored by one or more security devices. Accounts provide the basic framework for SentryPort Sentinel™. They are typically physical locations that hold a device.

Account Hierarchy

Accounts can be arranged in a hierarchy such as facility ' building ' floor ' room. Activations and their resulting incidents are directly associated with the account that holds the activated device, but can be analyzed, summarized and/or reported by any higher level account in the associated hierarchy.

Devices

Devices include sensors, controllers and any other mechanisms that monitor the environment. Devices can include access controls, motion sensors, glass break detectors, fire alarms, HVAC controls, etc.

Personnel

Personnel includes both first responders and/or people who need to be notified when an incident has occurred. In Alpha 1 that notification can be via email, pager or sms.

Schedules

Schedules determine who, of a group of responders, is on duty at the time that an incident occurs and therefore who specifically should be sent a message to check out the incident and who else on the call list should be notified. This functionality is provisioned for, but not fully implemented in Alpha 1.

Inbound Gateway

The Inbound Gateway converts an activation event for a device into a standard neutral format for analysis. In the prototype a map for only one device, the SentryPort Sentinel™ Biometric Access Control system, will be provided. Over time maps for various types and models of other devices will be added.

Activation Database

The Activation Database maintains a record of all device activations for analysis by IRIS to determine if an incident matching a pre-defined case has occurred and by STARS to determine if a new case has been created.

Inductive Reasoning Intelligence System (IRIS)

IRIS is a case based reasoning tool that suppresses false and nuisance alarms, amplifies sequential alarms, marks anomalous data for human examination and provides the information necessary to create an effective alarm mitigation strategy.

Self Teaching Alarm Response System (STARS)

STARS is an intelligent inductive knowledge engine designed to discover unforeseen patterns. STARS works in unison with IRIS, continually providing it with additional cases corresponding to the knowledge STARS acquires.

Incidents

Incidents are events to which security personnel must respond. An incident is triggered by an activation or contingency and includes all the activities associated with responding to and clearing that event. By default any device activation is an incident; however, IRIS allows the security director to define cases where single activations are suppressed, multiple activations are required to trigger an incident and/or sequential activations are combined into a single incident. Incidents contain all the information necessary for forensic analysis.

Monitoring

When SentryPort Sentinel™ is used in its optional supervisory computer mode, monitoring allows a dispatcher to keep an eye on the physical complex, manage any incidents and report the resolution of those incidents. Note: Alpha 1 is designed to be a fully dispatched system. Later releases will include dipatcherless control.

Protocols

Protocols define the response to an incident. For any given case, IRIS selects the appropriate protocol from a library of pre-established protocols. The protocol is a user defined document created with the iP Modeler that lists the people to be notified, the actions to be taken, and the data to be reported.

Actions and Steps

A protocol is made up of one or more steps. Each step may have an action such as "send an email to John@xyz.com" or text a message to Joan's cell phone telling her to respond to an incident at building B. These actions may either be manual - triggered by a dispatcher, or automatic on instantiation of the step. The step also lists the measures to be taken by the responder and provides space for reporting resolutions. In a multiple step protocol each subsequent step is initiated as the preceding step is reported completed.

Environmental Conditions

Environmental conditions represent significant information about an account or device that should be sent to a first responder for effective management of an incident. For example a note might let a responder know that there are toxic substances or bio-hazardous materials on site. Another note might indicate an alternate route to be use in case of emergency.

Dynamic Messages

Messages can be composed dynamically by setting parameter values in the message body and filling in the blanks similar to mail merge. Message recipients can likewise be determined dynamically in a similar manner. In future releases dynamic messages will be used to notify the appropriate responder based on the schedule.

Outbound Gateway

Messages are routed to email, pagers or cell phones by the outbound gateway. In future releases the outbound gateway will have full wireless application protocol (WAP) capability to support two way communications with mobile client devices such as pocket PCs.

Contingencies

These are incidents that are triggered manually rather than by a device activation such as a bomb threat or a snow storm. They have a protocol that can be invoked when needed.

iP Modeler

The iP Modeler is the tool used to build Protocols.

iKnowledge

iKnowledge is a document repository that allows users to store documents, media files, etc. such as procedures, material safety data sheets and video clips.

Reports

Incidents Analysis
Protocols Analysis
Trend Analysis - Number of Alarms
     by (a user specified) day, week, month, year
     for (a user specified) time period - From xx/xx/xx to yy/yy/yy
     for (a user specified) account hierarchy
Trend Analysis - Response Time
     by (a user specified) day, week, month, year
     for (a user specified) time period - From xx/xx/xx to yy/yy/yy
     for (a user specified) account hierarchy
Note: Not all reports listed have been implemented in Alpha 1.

Extended Datasets(Page 2)

Additional user defined data fields may be configured for Accounts, Devices, Personnel or Incidents. These fields can be used for gathering, storing, selecting and reporting any additional data that a specific installation requires.

External Database Connectivity

These additional user data fields may contain static data or may be linked to other databases and gather data for SentryPort Sentinel™ from those databases such as emergency notification information from a Human Resources database

User Classes

A User Class Code is a 2-digit code indicating the class to which an employee belongs. In general, the User Class is used as a vertical definition of users. Up to 20-User Class Codes can be defined. The following is an illustrative example of User Class Codes:
     01 top management
     03 vice-president
     04 director
     05 manager
     08 guard supervisor
     10 dispatcher
     15 security guard
     20 system administrator

User Groups

A User Group Code is a 6-character code indicating the group to which an employee belongs. In general, the User Group is a functional or organizational definition of users. The following is an illustrative example of User Class Codes:

User Group Code
FCLTY
SCRTY
ADMIN
HR

Description
Facilities
Security
Administrative Personnel
Human Resources

User Security

User classes and User groups together define how the system will be accessed by different users, what rights a user has, and who he/she reports to. E.g.: A security guard and guard supervisor will belong to the same user group 'security', but the access rights for the guard supervisor will be at a higher level since he will belong to a class higher than the security guard.

Program Security

Program Level Security defines, by Program and User Class, exactly what screens that Class of user has access to and exactly what can be done (ranging from Read Only privilege to full Delete privilege) by that Class on each window.

Codes Maintenance

Many fields in SentryPort Sentinel™ have list boxes which require selecting a specific value from a list of possible values. These list boxes are created and maintained in Codes Maintenance.

Labels Maintenance

Labels Maintenance allows customizing the product to each organization's needs. Different organizations use different nomenclatures. E.g. an "incident" may be referred to as an "event" by one organization and as an "occurrence" by another. Labels Maintenance also allows translating field labels into multiple languages. One user can have SentryPort Sentinel™ displayed in English while another can choose to display it in Spanish.

User Preferences

User Preferences are a personalized settings for each User. Similar to a 'profile' in windows OS. In User preferences, a user can select:
     the label style (see Labels Maintenance above)
     the date format to use.
     the screen that should be opened up at start-up.