Allied Universal unveils new GSOC services

SANTA ANA, Calif. and CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa.—Allied Universal, a facility services company and one of the largest security forces in North America with more than 150,000 employees, unveiled at ASIS 2017 in Dallas last week a new Global Security Operations Center as a Service (GSOCaaS) offering.

Available in the company's Monitoring and Response Center (MaRC), based in Richardson, Texas, the driving force of GSOCaaS is Swan Island Network's TX360 situational awareness and threat intelligence platform and ThreatMinder's social media monitoring product, combined with Allied Universal's monitoring and response center analyst and operator infrastructure. The new GSOC offerings also include LiveSafe mobile safety communications software and Groupdolists, a platform that digitizes Security Operations Center operating procedures and processes.

“Security has finally gone from reactive to predictive and that is where we want to sit,” Steve Jones, Allied Universal CEO, told Security Systems News. “With some of these products we are gathering info and using AI and analytics, so we can help our customers learn of all of the potential threats and adjust their security stance based on that intelligence.”

Through Allied Universal's Monitoring and Response Center, a focused recruiting operation provides specialized sourcing of GSOC operators and analysts that can be dedicated at a client's location or reside inside the MaRC. These resources are critical to the analysis, reporting and communication of critical events as well as managing all physical and operational information workflow.

“Businesses are seeking the best practices and technology to prepare and prevent threats, minimize risk and keep their employees and assets safe,” Ty Richmond, Allied Universal president, Integrated Security Solutions and Technology, said in the announcement. “Through our new integrated GSOC offerings and partners, we're providing a single sourcing capability with the latest platforms and tools to accomplish this in an ever-evolving and complex world.”

Jones pointed out that Richmond worked closely with Silicon developers to create the ThreatMinder software program in-house, which was developed “to give our clients 'true intel' and offer this as a service to help our customers to really be prepared for things that they may not even know about,” said Jones. “We do system integration like everybody else, but we really think these products are different than what is being offered, especially as a combined solution.”

Richmond told SSN, “It is a broader managed services offering. Traditional integrators don't have the benefit that we have of being a man-guarding operation that sits in security operations centers, so we are attuned to providing the systems, the technology and the intelligence that customers are demanding. These new platforms and products are just another extension of that and is part of our overall capability.”

What about customers who are not completely comfortable outsourcing their GSOC? “These products give us the natural ability to provide value to them in a completely different way than they are getting right now from their traditional man-guarding department,” said Richmond.

He also noted that the company continues to work closely with drone and robotics manufacturers “to provide another technology tool that allows you to extend your security operations. We are very bullish on robots and we see them as an augmentation to our man-guarding business. In the future, you will see drones commercially applied in security environments very similar to how robots are in man-guarding today. We are already getting interest from customers on using drones as part of their overall security ecosystem.”