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As defence organisations continue to face new and evolving threats, site management remains a critical component of their operations.
From secure access control to critical incident response, managing and securing sites can be a complex and challenging task. The Gallagher Command Centre software offers a comprehensive solution to these challenges, providing defence organisations with a powerful tool for site management.
Developed by leading global security manufacturer, Gallagher Security, Command Centre is a flexible, scalable platform that can be customised to meet the unique needs of defence organisations.
More than just access control - with the ability to seamlessly integrate with a variety of third-party systems and hardware such as CCTV, IP intercoms, electronic key safes, and Building Management Systems - Command Centre enables defence organisations to manage and secure their sites with confidence.
In this article, we'll explore the key capabilities of the Gallagher Command Centre and the potential benefits of using this intelligent platform to enhance security operations and ensure they run more efficiently.
Powering Defence Site Management with Command Centre
Gallagher’s Command Centre has been evolving continuously since its inception in 2001, and it’s at the heart of Gallagher’s security technology solution. Gallagher regularly updates Command Centre, adding new business features that have been influenced by direct feedback from Gallagher’s customers. Designed to be scalable and customisable, Command Centre is the foundation for building bespoke solutions that deliver tangible business efficiencies and savings.
Command Centre delivers enterprise-grade control to manage your site and staff and is an essential business tool to configure, manage and report on all aspects of your security solution.
As a leading provider of integrated access control and perimeter solutions, Gallagher makes intelligent features for compliance with health and safety standards, industry regulations, and business policy.
Gallagher’s range of workforce safety and management solutions come in a variety of optional licensed features that easily integrate into the Command Centre platform, offering things like Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) compliance and auditing. Some of these items might include granting competency-based access to ensure that people moving in and around the site have valid inductions; however, these competency-based access rules can be created on whatever makes sense to a site, such as having valid clearance to access an area in a particular defence environment.
Other OH&S applications can relate to the management of an entire site’s evacuation. Broadcast Notifications is a standard feature in Gallagher Command Centre, developed in response to the increasing need for security personnel to communicate simply and quickly with multiple people.
In emergency or lockdown situations where employees could be in danger, preconfigured Broadcast Notifications and recipient lists allow security personnel to quickly send critical instructions to multiple recipients in one simple step. Broadcast Notifications can also be automatically triggered by alarms and events. So, if there was an escalation in defence alert levels at a site, you could send a notification to everybody on site about the problem.
Best Practice Solutions in Defence
In addition to competency-based access permissions, Command Centre provides several other features that are well suited to the defence industry.
Integrated lockers are a popular solution, especially at defence sites where mobile phones are prohibited and need to be safely stored before entering secure areas.
Tag Boards are another popular feature that started out as an application for the mining sector for underground workers. Tag Boards provide operational continuity in addition to the safety benefit of knowing that all employees are always accounted for.
They also provide the ability to monitor the occupancy of certain zones. This application has proved useful for defence sites, granting the ability to know who is in your secure area at any one time, and if you’re the last person walking out of the secure area, you’re alerted that you must arm the system.
The Tag Board functionality can extend to monitoring single workers in secure workshops. Defence organisations find this feature particularly useful as it provides safety around their lone workers, allowing security staff to know where these individuals are on secure sites.
Say for example a defence organisation uses Tag Boards to monitor their classified workshops; only those employees with security clearance can access these workshops. Exposure Zones can enforce a time limit for employees working in these spaces. If the time limit is set for four hours and an employee stays in the workshop longer than that set period, then an alarm is generated and sent to a responder's device who can go and check the situation.
Command Centre also integrates with the Gallagher Visitor Management Client to streamline the process of onboarding visitors to your site. It provides features such as inductions, photo-taking, the printing of visitor badges, and notifications to hosts upon a guest’s arrival, as well as expected departure times. By using Command Centre, all visitor activities are captured in a single place, which makes generating activity and compliance reports a breeze.
Gone are the days of keeping visitor logbooks for seven years and maintaining a paper trail. Visitor Management Client eliminates the need for multiple data input systems, which increases business efficiency, reduces potential operator errors, and leaves you to rest assured that your health and safety obligations have been met and your site remains secure.
This is just a small sample of what Gallagher’s Command Centre has to offer. There are numerous other features that can be easily deployed without having to install new third-party software, and many of the features are included in the base licences. Additionally, other specific features can be licenced and added as required, which provides flexibility and scalability to the overall site management and security platform. Command Centre serves as the foundation for increasing the security and efficiency of your site management.
Robust Cybersecurity for Defence Applications
The defence industry faces constant threats from cyber-attacks. Cybersecurity is arguably the most important way that defence organisations can reduce the risk of unauthorised access to information.
A cyber breach of a defence organisation's security system could have far-reaching consequences, from sensitive information being stolen to the compromise of critical infrastructure.
Gallagher’s solutions are designed from inception to be as cyber-secure as possible, mitigate the risk of cyber-attacks and protect sensitive data. Gallagher evolves their solutions to meet the changing threat at a software and physical level, building in robust cyber security at every stage. With a dedicated cyber security research team, they regularly carry out internal and external vulnerability testing that provides ongoing protection in an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.
Gallagher is also authorised as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA). In becoming a CNA, Gallagher demonstrates a level of maturity in cyber security and a commitment to communicating vulnerability information to customers.
Any system that is used in the defence industry must be configured to mitigate security threats. Hardening is the review of every system component, looking for possible weaknesses that could enable an attacker. Gallagher provides hardening guides for their Command Centre, Controller 6000, and Visitor Management Kiosk. These include information on best practice operating system configuration, card technologies, and the impacts of legacy hardware.
Customers can identify potential vulnerabilities within their system using Gallagher’s Security Health Check, allowing them to proactively manage and respond to new and evolving security risks. Plus, they can also ensure a layered security approach to networks, data, and systems using Gallagher’s multi-factor authentication.
Gallagher provides customers with expert configuration advice to deploy the system in a secure environment, a Gallagher hardening guide to further strengthen each component, and encourages their customers to implement regular software and hardware updates across all devices to stay current with cyber threats and effectively manage obsolescence.
Partners Beyond Security
Gallagher is more than just a security technology provider; they have a strong commitment to partnering with their customers beyond simply selling products. Their in-market teams are heavily involved with many of their end-users, tailoring solutions to meet the specific needs of each site. They offer direct in-market support and work closely with their Channel Partners to provide specific solutions to meet end-users’ business needs.
Gallagher's team members are specialists in many different verticals, and each individual has real-world experience that they can pull from to offer best practice advice for deploying the many features in Command Centre. The company's commitment to being with their customers every step of the way is evident in their willingness to take in-market feedback to their head office to help shape the future direction of their technology.
With decades of experience in the security industry, Gallagher's team can explain how to solve a specific security problem and why you would do it that way, because they’ve solved these types of challenges before. They understand the importance of building relationships with their customers, which is why they are always just a phone call away.
To learn more about Gallagher’s range of integrated technology solutions visit: Integrated Solutions. Or check out Australia’s High Security Solutions here: Australia High Security
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JONATHON SMALL
National High Security Manager & Key Accounts Manager - Federal Government
Australia
Phone +61 438 175 219
Email
