Many organizations face potential threats to the safety of on-site personnel such as those arising from an aggressive client or at the more extreme end of the scale, an armed or violent intruder which would typically require a Lockdown response. Such threats are becoming more frequent and more severe in nature, and are occurring in environments where people should be safe from harm such as schools, health facilities, or public service organizations.
The FBI has undertaken a study into active shooter incidents in the US which identified that such incidents are increasing in number and severity, that educational facilities are not only one of the most likely locations for such an incident (after commerce) but are where the greatest number of casualties are likely, and that the majority of incidents end swiftly well before police arrive. Read more…
Crisis Averter is fast, accessible, discrete and enables a tailored security response to different levels of safety threats. It provides organizations with the benefit of investing in only one cost-effective tool which can be made widely available to all staff. It also mitigates the common knee-jerk reactions that organizations have to experiencing a serious security incident such as by spending more money on increased security personnel, expensive hardware or even closing offices.
Until now low level security threats have been mainly managed by staff phoning security personnel for assistance. However, this may place a staff member in more danger due to the inherently slow and indiscrete nature of this process. In environments where security risks are high, organizations have historically supplied key staff with duress pendants or have installed hardware panic buttons at critical locations. Whist they can be effective, these traditional devices are expensive to deploy widely so generally aren’t available to all personnel whose safety may be at risk. They also aren’t capable of identifying the severity of the incident and therefore don’t specify the most effective response required to address the situation.
Because Crisis Averter is a software alternative to traditional duress pendants or panic buttons it can easily and cost-effectively be available to all staff via desktop and laptop PCs. It enables the user to discretely activate one of up to three levels of alarm depending on the nature of the threat, which then triggers an appropriate security response to address the threat posed.
The alarm buttons and the defined response can be customized to an organization’s Occupational Safety and Health emergency procedures, but by default the following three categories are available:
Activate Lockdown
|
This alarm would be triggered in the most serious cases where there is a high degree of threat to personal safety (e.g. a person with a weapon is seen on-site (Lockdown) or about to enter the building (Lockout)). This is the highest alarm possible within organizations’ security systems and is for example, similar to the alarm that some providers in the health industry would use in relation to a ‘Code Black’ or ‘Code Silver’ incident.
In such events time is critical and so Crisis Averter provides:
- the ability to raise an alarm by anyone, anywhere as soon as a threat is identified, and
- in addition to notifying appropriate security responders it can be configured to provide an immediate automated response such as to lock doors, turn lights off or flash lights to notify of a situation, sound a siren or close fire doors.
|
|
Critical Incident
|
This would be triggered when an important security event has occurred, but which is not severe enough to warrant a lockdown (e.g. an agitated/aggressive person is exhibiting combative or unpredictable behavior). For example, this would be used in events similar to a ‘Code Gray’ incident in some hospitals.
|
|
Assistance Required
|
This is when a person is uncomfortable with a current situation and requires some form of assistance from a supervisor or security staff (e.g. a staff member is alone in an interview room with a client who is becoming agitated, unruly/disruptive behavior in a reception/waiting area, gang member on-site, medical emergency on a school campus).
|
Click here to find out how it works