The market for security technology is growing. Diffuse terrorist threats have created an increased demand for security assistance systems designed to protect civil liberties such as the freedom of assembly. Such sought after solutions demand precisely the in-depth and application-focused security research carried out by the FKIE.

The Challenge

In many public areas, such as airports, railway stations or in and around government buildings and parliaments, we face a complex monitoring challenge. The situation is sometimes unclear but the potential damage is great. Yet the ultimate responsibility rests entirely in the hands of human decision-makers who are often exposed to severe stress and must act under great time pressure. Even the most experienced and specialist security experts are frequently so busy dealing with routine tasks that they have little time available to direct their expertise at identifying potential threats.

The FKIE Solution

Automated security assistance systems recognize potential dangers within large gatherings of people and so free up staff from routine monitoring tasks. Ultimate responsibility, however, still rests in human hands but because multi-sensor security assistance systems are able to detect specific anomalies such as explosives being carried about a person’s body and can bring them to the immediate attention of the security experts, who can then target those sources of danger more precisely. The key achievement of the solutions developed by the FKIE is that of making it possible for security staff to manage the complex task of monitoring people. Security systems as we understand them guarantee a greater degree of security without limiting the freedom of the public yet have the capability of handling sensitive data with appropriate care.

As part of the FKIE business sector Security Assistance Systems we explore, conceive and develop such demanding system solutions for surveillance assignments. Assistance systems of this kind are characterized by their ability to adapt, to the extent that they can even “learn” to react to threats that are still largely unknown.

Managers of large, globally operating, companies are often faced with complex management issues. However, many of them still fail to take full advantage of affordable technical solutions developed to optimize the management process by making it more effective and flexible. The mechanisms inherent in the Network Enabled Capabilities (NEC), which ensure that all members of cross-coalition military operations are always fully coordinated, can also offer an attractive solution to decision-makers in the business world.

The Challenge

Industry’s managerial elite have to make important decisions with far-reaching implications on a daily basis and often under severe time constraints, and in some cases with only vague information about the situation. The need to coordinate managers acting simultaneously and globally represents a demanding challenge to companies operating across national boundaries. Different branches, subcontractors and suppliers will not necessarily always share a common situational awareness. Valuable knowledge may lie in the minds of colleagues or on local, incompatible systems, unless it is made available to all parties as a common base for decision-making. What is missing is an integrated communication and support system that will function across language barriers and technical boundaries. Traditional approaches to overcoming complex issues such as the decomposition of functions, modularization and standardization are no longer relevant to today’s decision-making processes so that their coordination, planning and optimization tasks pose a range of problems. At the same time, many organizations are having to prove themselves in a less secure environment in which attacks and industrial espionage are on the increase, particularly as a result of the Internet.

The FKIE Solution

Support systems designed in accordance with the Network Enabled Capabilities model can improve management information systems throughout the management process. An important aspect of this is knowledge of critical events or conditions, known in the military as “situation information”. An essential prerequisite to managing a number of projects, as well as to making strategic decisions is the ability to identify, contextualize, adapt and present to the decision makers the knowledge they require to carry out the task at hand. In any given situation the activities of those involved can only be meaningfully and effectively coordinated if they all have the same broad understanding of the situation and are able to systematically counter-check it against their own knowledge. The difficulties of predicting critical events, combined with fluctuating conditions in the areas where the decisions are to be implemented, means that plans must be regularly adapted. Since weakly structured processes can only be partially determined and controlled by classical benchmarks, it is not possible to optimize the collaborative process just by applying a simple set of rules. It is essential that the decision-maker has the broadest possible understanding of the situation including all pertinent factors and the dependencies they have.

Although typical of military command and control processes these features are of equal importance to managing simultaneous, collaborative projects and the work procedures required when developing and procuring high-tech products. The adaption of our knowledge of military command, control and reconnaissance to industrial applications has led to the creation of so-called “Management Cockpits“. These are new support systems which enable program, project and process managers to make target-focused decisions despite severe time constraints as they offer a more precise overview of the prevailing situation in both the project and the process portfolio as well as the associated projections. We also undertake collaborative research and development with manufacturers of application systems enabling them to enhance the performance of their products through the integration of management assistance systems.

Increased networking within and between companies has made them increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks and we are developing dedicated defense strategies to address this mounting threat in virtual space. The experts in our Cyber Defense Labs keep pace with the rapid development of network infrastructure technology and the diversification of such potential threats in the form of so-called DoS attacks, malware, botnets or phishing. As a result they can offer specific and individual IT security support to decision-makers in all areas of network-based management.