Haystax Technology - Experts & Thought Leaders

Located in downtown Houston, Texas, USA, at the George R. Brown Convention Center (GRB), the Houston Living Lab (HLL) serves as a testing ground for city departments and partners to test and validate new technology. In 2017, the Houston First Corporation (HFC) established the lab following a successful collaboration with Milestone Systems and several other security manufacturers to rapidly deploy video technologies for nearly one million attendees at the Super Bowl Live festival. Now HLL develops smart city solutions for deployment across Houston. Security technology solutions With the help of the Houston First Corporation — a local government corporation created to operate the city's convention and performing arts facilities — the City of Houston hosts many high-profile events annually. One of HFC's long-term goals is establishing Houston as a pioneer in smart city initiatives to further promote the region as a tourism and convention business destination. City of Houston and HFC needed to bring together technology partners and build on living infrastructure To accomplish this goal, the City of Houston and HFC needed to bring together technology partners and build on existing infrastructure to further enhance public safety and security during events. In 2017, the city hosted Super Bowl LI, an event that became a literal game changer in how the city rapidly deploys integrated security technology solutions. Legacy security systems The 10-day Super Bowl Live festival at the 12-acre Discovery Green featured free well-known music artist concerts and other attractions. The neighbouring GRB hosted the NFL Experience event with interactive activities and player appearances. When hosting large events spread out over several venues, the city found that the added congestion from portable event stages, booths, and attendees changed the environment. This rendered the standalone legacy security systems inadequate when hosting the events. “In these situations, the green space is no longer open; it’s cluttered with event structures, banners, and everything that comes with a festival. We found that our existing camera system was getting either visually or audibly interfered with,” said Jack C. Hanagriff, former Program Manager for the City of Houston’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security. Access to the camera system In the six-month planning period before the festival, Verizon installed fibre-optic cable for the event Determining a temporary system was needed to provide security at Super Bowl Live, Hanagriff and his team brought in Milestone Systems on the recommendation of HFC's long-time integrator Teksys and manufacturer Axis Communications. Milestone helped design and test a rapidly deployable, fully integrated supplemental camera and video management software (VMS) system at Discovery Green. In the six-month planning period before the festival, Verizon installed fibre-optic cable for the event. This allowed access to the camera system with Axis F Series modular cameras, Q Series PTZ dome cameras, and thermal imaging systems. Milestone open platform  Using a Milestone open platform system design, the temporary festival infrastructure easily integrated with the non-Milestone VMS already used at GRB. The system was built on the Milestone design. “We were able to tie both VMS networks into our existing homeland security network. We converged the two systems to give law enforcement, the fire department, and other agencies access to all systems seamlessly,” said Jack C. Hanagriff, adding “Again, this system did not exist just four days prior.” Houston Living Lab inspires Smart City R&D HLL allows city departments and partners to test and validate technology in an active environment After successfully collaborating with Milestone Systems and other security manufacturers for the Super Bowl Live events, HFC established the Houston Living Lab. The HLL allows city departments and partners to test and validate technology in an active environment. Technology partners include Milestone Systems, Axis Communications, Cradlepoint, Dell Technologies, Haystax, Acre Comnet (formerly Razberi), Siklu, and Verizon. Video analytics are provided by Athena Security, Citilog, EAGL Technology, Evolon Technology, Irisity (formerly Agent Vi), Sound Intelligence, and AirSight (formerly 911 Security). Technology Partnerships Enhance Public Safety The 1.9 million-square-foot GRB Convention Center has diverse security needs. Beyond public safety and monitoring aggressive behaviour in and around the centre, the security team proactively improves traffic at intersections and manages four large parking garage operations. In 2021, HFC worked with Houston Public Works (HPW) on designing and installing an on-premises software solution to easily bring together the latest technologies at GRB. The 1.9 million-square-foot GRB convention centre has diverse security needs Milestone video management technologies provide seamless integrations with cutting-edge security applications. Nearly 600 legacy Axis Communications cameras are integrated with Milestone Smart Walls in multiple security and parking command centres spread across facilities in the theatre and convention districts, providing complete situational awareness at any given moment. Relationships built at the HLL HFC wanted to be able to identify dangerous situations and be proactive rather than reactive to help mitigate risks. They now have visibility into different situations, such as vehicles driving the wrong way, large crowds gathering in an area or even listening for glass breaking, car alarms, gunshots, or aggressive behaviours.  “The relationships built at the HLL were instrumental in helping us support the needs at other high-profile sites throughout the city that were identified with concerns regarding general public safety and quality of life,” added Jack C. Hanagriff.

Constellation for Incident Management pulls out the highest priority threat signals and presents them in an easily-digestible format Haystax Technology, a provider of advanced security analytics and risk-management solutions, announced recently it has released an updated version of its Constellation for Incident Management platform. The core Constellation system is already used by numerous state and local agencies and private enterprises nationwide, and the update delivers added functionality, mobility, deeper app-to-app integration and collaborative capabilities across our customers’ entire chain of leadership, analysis and operations.   Merging data from a wide array of sources, Constellation for Incident Management pulls out the highest priority threat signals and presents them in an easily-digestible format, allowing law enforcement, fire, emergency management and corporate security teams to quickly understand emerging risks, and giving them the confidence to respond decisively. “Constellation for Incident Management helps first responders and emergency managers to improve planning and coordination and maximise their available resources, all of which are key to better response times and efficacy,” said Chriss Knisley, President of Haystax Technology. “Above all, our goal is to enable decision-makers to prioritise their risks and make faster information-driven decisions in real time, and these updates help them do that even more effectively than before.” The latest Constellation for Incident Management updates include: Events App: One of the newest apps in Constellation allows users to track scheduled events and view them against incidents, assets and other data on a map or in a timeline, providing greater context and thus more comprehensive situational awareness. Sports leagues can map out their security requirements for an entire game season. Large festivals and conventions can track all sanctioned and unsanctioned events across multiple days, deploying extra security personnel when VIPs will be present. And fire departments can schedule the year’s fire drills at all their area schools. “Constellation for IncidentManagement helps first respondersand emergency managers to improveplanning and coordination andmaximise their available resources" Timeline App: A new way of seeing Constellation app data, the Timeline app displays incident reports, scheduled events and newly completed assessments in a sequential view for easy visualisation and monitoring, and rapid access to details. Constellation for Fire Safety: A new Constellation configuration developed specifically for firefighters, the app enables fire departments to load critical information (for example, hazmat, construction methods, ingress/egress) about each asset they may respond to, and to conduct NFPA 1620-compliant pre-incident planning assessments on each asset. A mobile reporting app enables on-scene personnel to submit status reports and photos, and all the integrated asset, incident and assessment data can be easily visualised on a map. Other enhancements and upgrades to existing Constellation apps include: Assets App: New 'Person' and 'Place' asset types have been added; assets can be labeled as to their risk priority level; locally relevant news and social media posts from the Threat Streams app are displayed on individual asset pages, and users can define how they are filtered (e.g., by importance, relevance, time or threat model score); and each asset-page miniature map now displays local threats streams, incidents, events and other assets. Assessments App: Scoring support is now available, so that users can for example accurately gauge their required levels of resources with pre-event assessments and can analyse major gaps with post-event assessments; in addition, a new SWAT assessment template has been added that can be used for many asset types like airports, hotels and schools. Map App: Now displays ‘heat maps’ at specific locations, alerting users to unusually high levels of geo-located social media activity detected in the Threat Streams app; distance measuring tool added; additional sender and image information is included in the incident icons. Incidents App: Incidents can now be automatically created from Threat Streams feed items, at which point automated alerts are sent to users. Threat Streams App: Can now ingest custom data feeds (for example, emergency dispatch/CAD) through the use of APIs; and hundreds of additional feeds, including 4chan, have been added. Mobile Constellation App: Now integrates our new Events, Timeline and Field Interview apps. Many of our long-standing customers are seeing the benefits of Constellation for Incident Management. For example, the city of Indianapolis recently switched over to the new system having previously been a user of Haystax Technology’s Digital Sandbox 7 (DS7) platform. Inaugurated at the most recent Indianapolis 500 race, Constellation enables city officials to monitor, report, alert and respond to threats from a shared environment, providing the city with even better usability, improved sharing between central command and officers in the field and better collaboration. Haystax Constellation for Incident Management is easy to set up, with no hardware or software requirements, and new users can try it for free for 14 days.

As a society, we have been studying crime for years, with an eye to prevention. Now that mass shootings have seized our attention, experts have begun studying this particularly violent crime, again with an eye to prevention.   “Our view is that inside a large enterprise — a corporation or government agency — anyone can be the risk you may face someday,” says Bryan Ware, CEO of McLean, Virginia-based Haystax Technology, a business that identifies risks before they come threats. Insider trust model Haystax looks for threats at all levels, from petty theft to mass murder. Law enforcement agencies use Haystax software products to prevent attacks and manage large events. Fire departments use Haystax software to manage life safety. Today, large commercial enterprises are using Haystax products to identify potential insider threats. How does software identify someone that poses a threat? “We started by building a software model that thinks like a human being – that is, thinks by using concepts,” Ware says. “We also asked why we trust people. What characteristics does an individual possess that build trust in others? Using individual data to assess risks “Our models pull in data on individuals from background investigations, log in and log out times and many other factors. All in all, our insider trust model includes 700 factors that all of us have to some degree.” "Our models pull in data on individuals from background investigations, log in and log out times and many other factors"  Haystax uses those 700 factors to build models for everyone employed by its clients. When people go through divorce or run into financial difficulties or develop substance abuse problems, they change, Ware continues. By fusing all of these factors together and monitoring for changes, it becomes possible to make decisions about an individual’s level of risk. “There is a pattern to everyone’s life,” Ware says. “What does it mean when the pattern changes? We have developed algorithms that track these changes and produce risk factors on each individual on a continuous basis. We can tell who the highest risk personnel are. “Suppose we find that a manager is going through life difficulties. We might suggest a different level of supervision.” Identifying violent risks Experts that study mass murders say that perpetrators often have similar personalities: During the investigation of virtually every mass shooting, descriptions of the shooters in the days before the shooting are similar: He is typically male, single, white and in his 30s or 40s. He had grown sullen and withdrawn in recent weeks. He bought his guns legally. Some, but not all, exhibit signs of mental illness. As a rule, they are outsiders. And many friends, relatives and work associates notice disturbing changes in behaviour before the tragedy occurs. "In Orlando, the shooter was a security guard. Wouldn’t it have made sense to have monitored him in some way?" “It’s true,” Ware says. “In every single case we’ve looked into, there is always a lot of information in advance in the heads of friends and family and in databases. While we don’t want to become a society of tattletales, we need to think about these issues as a society. “I believe we will see more and more of these kinds of threats in our workplaces. In Orlando, the shooter was a security guard. Wouldn’t it have made sense to have monitored him in some way?” What privacy issues does this high level of individual scrutiny raise? “Good question,” Ware says. “We can’t violate expectations of privacy. Many of our customers are high security government agencies and businesses. When they hire someone, that individual consents to being monitored.” Ware goes on to note that companies with lower security concerns would require a lower level of monitoring — a level tailored to the company’s particular needs. Still, it would be important that employees know about and consent to being monitored.

FirstNet’s network would provide dedicated support to law enforcement on the scene not only from a local standpoint, but from a Federal standpoint as well Someday in the not-too-distant future, first responders – from police to EMS will have access to a secure broadband network. It will keep them connected with other agencies while ensuring their data is protected even in the midst of natural and manmade disasters.   At least that’s the idea behind the U.S. Congress’s creation of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet). This authority just sent out requests for proposals (RFPs) to build a first-of-its-kind network of unprecedented scope and reliability for the nation’s first responders. Constructing this massive project will take both money and skill to ensure it works effectively and is protected against the types of hacks that have plagued businesses on the Internet.    “It’s about having a system available to public safety that they can depend on and use without having to share it in a time of national need,” explains Patrick Flynn, Director of Homeland/National Security Programs for Intel Security (formerly McAfee). Additionally, it provides a wide broadband pipe for public safety. The requirements for public safety professionals to do their job effectively are getting larger and larger as technology advances. They need to be situationally aware, and have a common operational picture. “It’s being able to diagnose the patient more effectively en route [for example],” adds Flynn. “[The network] would provide dedicated support to law enforcement on the scene not only from a local standpoint, but from a Federal standpoint as well.” Separate from commercial communication networks FirstNet grew out of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, and reflected a long-held goal of states’ public safety agencies and the 9/11 Commission. The new agency, which operates with an annual budget of $126 million, is expecting to get the first components of the system up and running within the next year. FirstNet is envisioned to be a backbone based on open, non-proprietary standards and commercially available equipment. It will not replace existing mobile radio, cellular and Internet services being used by public safety agencies. Participating states will build out their own systems and interconnections using the backbone, possibly with Federal help. Although plans call for relying on commercially available technology and commercial carriers, FirstNet will be completely separate from other commercial communications networks. FirstNet operates with an annual budget of $126 million, and expects to get the first components of the public safety network operational within the next year Mobile apps for police personnel to share intel One goal of the new network is to make it easier for agencies to move from paper to web-based records – much as another Federal programme has enticed doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic medical records. Many police are still writing field interview notes by hand and then eventually entering them into a central database. Private sector companies are busy creating mobile apps that allow police to enter their notes directly into a computer and then upload them for use by other officers. “The beautiful thing is putting this information where everybody can use it,” says Doug Pasley, a former officer with the Tampa Police Department and now Field Operations Support Lead at Haystax Technology. “Say I document a field interview with a bad guy and he leaves me and goes on to commit a crime. (Police) are already using the data I just submitted because there’s no time delay.” In the days before apps such as Haystax Technology’s new Mobile Field Interview app, there was usually a 48- to 72-hour delay. The officer had to enter it, get it approved by a superior and only then would it make its way to a detective who needed it for an investigation.  Instant communication during natural disasters “The technology world is making it possible to investigate crimes that much faster,” he adds. “By getting that information to the detective, he can sit in his office and do an area search minutes after I hit submit and find a bad guy he may be looking for.” The always-on nature of the network will extend to natural disasters as well when many commercial networks fail. “As (the Tampa police agencies) were moving into the technology world one of our biggest worries was whether the technology would be there after a hurricane,” says Pasley, who was charged with implementing new technology when he was with the Tampa police. “We’re always looking for the big bombs, but the big hurricanes or tornadoes are what hit us more often.”