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SECURITY SYSTEMS NEWS AUgUST 2013 NEWS www.securitysystemsnews.com 11 ESA develops electronic security guidelines for schools By Leif Kothe IRVING, Texas—An Electronic Security Association panel of experts recently completed the ESA Electronic Security Guidelines for Schools, a resource for school offcials who are considering adding security systems to existing security programs. Available for free public download Speaking Continued from page 8 third-party subsystems will be overly burdensome in some circumstances. I'm also interested to see how virtualization technologies will play a role in our future projects, and whether we actually end up shifting a lot of the processing and storage of data to the cloud. What do you find is the best way to stay up to date on the best technology for your customers? Staying up-to-date really requires keeping in touch with several different sides of the industry. We love to have manufacturers visit our offce to show us their latest and greatest technologies, as well as their product roadmap. Understanding the roadmap is particularly important because we are often designing projects that won't be completed for several years, which can be a lifetime in security technology. We also rely on integrators to help us understand what is working well in the feld from an implementation and reliability perspective. Finally, we need to engage in constant dialogue with our clients and end users to understand the practical element: which security system features they actually use or wish they had. Bells and whistles are nice to have, but if end users don't need or use them then they cease to be differentiating factors between products or manufacturers. SSN Senate Continued from page 10 quality and systems with more powerful data crunching capabilities, according to Dunn, who likened the Senate bill's border proposals to America's Cold War era investment in the space program. If security provisions of a similar scope and scale are included in a House bill, Dunn said the industry will face new challenges, but he told SSN that he's "fully confdent the industry can meet them." SSN at www.ESAweb.org, the guidelines lay out key components of an effective school security strategy, providing assessments of security planning, identifying threats, procurement types, contractor selection, equipment types and system use. The guidelines are the consensus of a panel of experts, led by David "There was a lot of demand for this." —David Koenig, ESA Koenig, treasurer of ESA and partner of Capital Fire & Security in Madison, Wis., who said the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School made the project an even greater imperative. "This started all subsequent to Newtown because we recognized from the experience of our members that there was a lot of demand for this," Koenig told Security Systems News. "We thought people could use guidance on how they approach securing schools." The guidelines were presented at the Electronic Security Expo during a special luncheon featuring Michael Kehoe, police chief in Newtown, Conn., and a frst responder to the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. SSN