The Virtual Perimeter in the Age of Convergence

Security is essentially the ancient art of protecting the perimeter. Sometimes ancient, and even recent-day, technologies cannot adequately protect the actual exterior perimeter. For such instances, we recommend establishing a virtual perimeter inside the exterior one. This virtual perimeter is created by delineating a line of pixels in the image of one or more digital cameras. This line of pixels can form the interior, virtual perimeter. The cameras feed the video signal to a server performing analysis of the video images. The server is looking for specific objects in the images that have certain attributes associated with humans, such as a neck and shoulders. When such objects appear near the virtual perimeter and approach that perimeter, the server issues an alert to the security force. A guard carries a handheld device which displays the object and tracks its movement as the guard approaches the intruder.

This solution requires technical sophistication to design and deploy, but it is a perfect example of a security solution that is available as a result of the convergence of certain technologies.