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Monitoring Matters

Aired grievances

March 13, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

A dozen lawsuits later and it sounds like Airbnb has finally put the kibosh on indoor security cameras in its policies. I’m not an aficionado of the rental properties lifestyle but I suppose I assumed that it was, at the very least, frowned upon beforehand to install security cameras indoors at places like this. Obviously, bathrooms and bedrooms were already a no-go but having a bunch of Norman Bates’ peeping on tenants while having a somewhat ambiguous policy on indoor surveillance...

Airbnb, Andrew Witty, security cameras, Surveillance, UnitedHealthcare, Wyze


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Monitoring Matters

Thrillogy

March 6, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

The return of dreaded continuity. I swear that three is our lucky number and this will be the last time I discuss ransomware in this space, at least for a little while. BlackCat/ALPHV is apparently falling apart this week if you’ve been following that story closely. The official word is that they stole the $22 million payment from UnitedHealthcare and collectively ghosted the world. Which, you know, that money is kind of already stolen? I mean, that’s what blackmail basically is, guys....

ALPHV, Artificial Intelligence (AI), BlackCat, Cybersecurity, Ransomware, UnitedHealthcare


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Monitoring Matters

United they fall

February 28, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

Oh man, I really don’t like doing the same topic two weeks in a row, but we have to talk about ransomware again. It should be about the ADT webcast, but we’ll save that one for next week, as a treat. Instead, today we’re going to take our medicine and I get to say I told you so while discussing the ransomware attack on UnitedHealthcare by BlackCat. You’ll remember BlackCat (ALPHV) because we’ve covered it before, but also because in this very blog spot last week I...

ADT, ALPHV, BlackCat, FTC, Ransomware, United States Department of Justice (DOJ), UnitedHealthcare


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Monitoring Matters

Bit defenders

February 21, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

This week international members of law enforcement patted themselves on the back for slaying the proverbial dragon of LockBit, but in reality, it’s just one head of the Hydra. I don’t mean to lessen or downplay that accomplishment either. This has been a serious blow to global cybercriminal activity and a victory against destabilizing actions taken by politically aligned criminal organizations (because let’s not pretend the ransomware gangs are largely state sponsored)....

Artificial Intelligence (AI), BlackCat, Cl0p, cybercriminals, data breach, LockBit, MOVEit, Ransomware


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Monitoring Matters

Cupid de Locke

February 14, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

It’s Valentine's Day and I’d love to mention that I have a sweetheart of a topic to share this week, but I’m sorry to say it’s left me a little brokenhearted. Since the beginning of February, I’ve been watching a lot of Q4 2023 reports roll out and while we can still safely call it the year of AI, it’s also the year of the residential security market falling flat on its face. I talked about this a bit in my last blog post where I discussed ADT...

ADT, Assa Abloy, Jay Geldmacher, Residential Security, Resideo


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On The Editor's Desk

Capital gains

February 7, 2024Cory Harris, Editor

What do you get when you bring 40 journalists together to Washington, D.C.? If you said a presidential briefing or a congressional hearing, good guess, but for me, the answer is a one-of-a-kind experience learning about the inner workings of a physical security solutions provider. This week, myself and other security journalists from literally all around the world (yes, from as far as Singapore and Australia), have gathered for the Genetec Global Press Summit, a two-day event featuring a combination...

Andrew Elvish, Capital One Arena, Genetec, Global Press Summit, Michel Chalouhi, State of Physical Security Report 2024


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Goodbye, Mr. Sunshine

January 31, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

After a week of being under the weather I could use a little sun to brighten my outlook. Unfortunately, following some news last week, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. I’ll get to that point in a moment, since it’s a little detour from normal security news. The actual news I wanted to discuss this week is the often discussed but still unreleased ADT smart home security system made in collaboration with Google. It so happened that my boss asked me earlier this week what was...

ADT, ADT Solar, Google, Google Nest, Residential, smart home


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On The Editor's Desk

20, 2024 hours to go

January 24, 2024Cory Harris, Editor

Yes, I am channeling the legendary Ramones for my first blog of 20, 20, 24 - wait, let me correct that - 2024. See where my mind is this week? I’m far from being sedated; as a matter of fact, I’m pretty pumped about what’s ahead for Security Systems News readers in the coming days, weeks, and months ahead. But before I get into 2024, I have to look back at the end of 2023, and the tremendous webcast we hosted in December, titled “State of the Industry - A Look Ahead...

2024, Andrew Lanning, Antoinette King, Dean Drako, Don Joos, Greg Massullo, Integrator of the Year/Bill Bozeman Awards, Ivan Avramov, PSA Security Network (PSA), PSA TEC, Ramones, Security Systems News (SSN), Senthilkumar Chandrasekaran, SIA Women in Security Forum (WISF)


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Monitoring Matters

Eyes wide open

January 17, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

Now that CES is behind us let’s step back from smart home security products for a minute and talk about AI-based surveillance platforms and what an impact they’re making. By impact of course I mean that with AI everything being so en vogue it’s been particularly popular for surveillance where it’s being used to do everything from authenticated visitors and license plates to identifying dangerous patterns and harmful devices. That last one is especially notable since...

AEGIX Global, AI-based, Rich Onofrio, Shooter Detection Systems (SDS), Surveillance, ZeroEyes


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Palm d’Oor

January 10, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

It’s CES 2024, and what that means is a whole lot of residential and public-facing security products being introduced with the new year. I think if I had to pick what stands out the most in the crowd it’s the continued line of smart home products we see evolving and branching out. Not all of these are security-focused products, but most of them are security adjacent. Also, really, if we’ve learned anything in these past few years it’s that if your device is smart,...

2024, Amazon One Enterprise, Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Phillips, smart home, smart lock


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