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PSIA releases draft proposal of PLAI specification
Las Vegas, Nv (USA)
The Physical Security Interop-
erability Association
(PSIA) is
releasing a draft proposal of its
Physical-Logical Access Interopera-
bility (PLAI) specification.
It is hoped that this new pro-
posal will bring the industry closer
to achieving cost effective, auto-
mated synchronisation of physical
and logical identities, privileges
and credentials.
"We're excited about the po-
tential the PLAI specification has
for reshaping physical and logical
identity access for the security in-
dustry," said David Bunzel, execu-
tive director, the PSIA. "With the
PLAI specification, we're making it
possible to achieve access, privilege
and credentials management across
physical and logical identities on a
plug-and-play basis. This is a game
changer."
The PSIA released the PLAI
draft during a special session of the
PLAI Working Group at ISC West
in Las Vegas recently.
"Today we were pleased to
demonstrate multiple disparate
systems working seamlessly
through the PLAI draft specifica-
tion," said Mohammad Soleimani,
chair of the PLAI Working Group
and executive vice president and
CTO, Kastle Systems. "That
demonstration showed how the
PLAI specification fundamen-
tally changes the way the security
industry approaches identity,
privilege and access management.
We are opening a door to enable
broad, holistic solutions that span
the physical and logical realms of
identity."
During the ISC West demon-
stration, the PLAI specification
enabled an identity to be entered
into Microsoft's widely used and
LDAP-compliant Active Direc-
tory, and then to automatically
propagate all of that identity's
associated privileges and creden-
tials to physical access control
systems (PACS). Similarly, when
an identity was removed from Ac-
tive Directory, the PLAI specifica-
tion automatically propagated
the revocation of privileges and
credentials in the physical access
control systems.
"Being able to automate tem-
porary and permanent privilege
management through the PLAI
specification will significantly
reduce administrative time and
cost burden," said Mike Faddis,
Director at Microsoft Global
Security. "The PLAI specifica-
tion streamlines and standardizes
the management of physical and
logical identities, helping chief
security officers effectively support
Enterprise Security Risk Manage-
ment."
The PLAI specification ensures
the logical and physical access
privileges associated with an em-
ployee's role are always synchro-
nised. That enables a company
to ensure a person is physically
present before permitting access to
databases or applications.
Further, the PSIA's PLAI speci-
fication will enable automated
inter-PACS interoperability in the
market for the first time. Users
can reduce multiple access cards
because the inter-PACS interoper-
ability automates the process of
enabling an access card associated
in one vendor's PACS to be used
at entry points associated with a
different PACS system as long as
the card readers are the same.
"With the PLAI specification,
the industry is getting functional-
ity we've always wanted without
spending significant time and
money to build custom interfaces
among dozens of systems," said
Joshua Jackson, director, global
product integration, Stanley Se-
curity. "This specification opens
the door for manufacturers and
integrators to add a great deal of
value to security solutions while
minimizing cost and implementa-
tion time."
The PLAI specification builds
on standards already used in the
logical identity and access manage-
ment world, including Role-Based
Access Control (RBAC-RPE) and
Lightweight Directory Access Pro-
tocol (LDAP). These will enable
vendors and users to more easily
map logical identities and their
role-based privileges to physical
identities.
The specification is being
developed by the PSIA's Physical-
Logical Access Interoperability
(PLAI) Working Group, which
includes Allegion (previously
Ingersoll Rand), Brivo Systems,
HID Global, Inovonics, Kastle,
Z9 Security, Mercury Systems,
Microsoft Global Security, Stanley
Security, Tyco Security and UTC.
Norbain acquires
fire alarm distributor
Reading, Berkshire
Norbain
has acquired Detec-
tion Supplies,
a leading sup-
plier of fire alarm and ancillary
equipment to the UK fire
installation market.
Established for over 20
years, Detection Supplies
will continue to operate as
a standalone business under
the Norbain SD umbrella. All
sales enquiries will be handled
directly at the Detection Sup-
plies offices, based in Fording-
bridge, Hampshire.
Trevor Saunders, MD and
Owner of Detection Supplies,
comments: "I'm extremely
pleased to have found such a
safe home for the business and
the staff. This move provides
Detection Supplies with a very
firm foundation to continue to
serve its customers and pursue
its expansion in the market."
Mobotix CEO sacked
In 2013 Magnus Ekerot, was
appointed as the CEO of the
German IP-surveillance camera
manufacturer. Following a
meeting of the Supervisory
Board on February 18th this
year he was released from this
position. Instead the CFO
Klaus Gesman will take over
the responsibilities of the CEO
and sales until further notice.
Dr. Oliver Gabel will remain as
chief technical officer (CTO).
Ralf Hinkel, the founder of
Mobotix
, now also Chairman
of the Board, who handed over
the responsibility as the CEO
to Magnus Ekerot one year
ago, has explained the situation
in an email addressed to the
partners of Mobotix: "Unfor-
tunately it did not work out
and the Supervisory Board had
to take action and discontinue
his contract." In the email Ralf
Hinkel blamed their Global
Partner Network and sales
model for producing too
much time consuming paper-
work for both Mobotix and
their partners and promised
to change the company's
course back to its "roots of
success".
Magnus Ekerot has left Mobotix.
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