Blogs

A curious story came across my desk because of it's relationship to Mace: The company lost $2.2 million to a 76-year-old hedge fund manager who lost $350 million and then faked his own suicide before being caught today by the FBI. Here's the initial story. The paper got a hold of the suicide note: Nadel's note stated "there are those that would like to kill him, but that he will do it himself." Well, I don't think Dennis Raefield rolls that way, but he's not happy about getting fleeced. In another development, the company that makes the Mace pepper spray acknowledged it lost $2.2 million in the Sarasota hedge funds operated by Nadel. Mace Security International Inc. said the Victory Fund failed to pay the money as promised on Jan. 15, the day after Nadel vanished. The $2.2 million is the largest amount of money any investor has publicly acknowledged losing in the funds operated by Nadel. The company also said it was stymied in its effort to withdraw its money as far back as October. "We have already filed a report with the authorities, and we intend to take all possible legal action against the Victory Fund," said Dennis Raefield, Mace's president and chief executive. Apparently, though, Nadel was either just trying to skip town or chickened out, since he turned himself in to the FBI today. This part of the story doesn't look good for Mace getting its money back: The SEC said Nadel's funds appeared to have assets totaling less than $1 million, while he claimed in sales materials for three of the funds that they had about $342 million in assets as of Nov. 30. The materials also boasted of monthly returns of 11 to 12 percent for several of the funds last year, when they actually had negative results. An investor in one fund received an account statement for November indicating her investment was worth almost $420,000. In reality, the entire fund had less than $100,000, according to the SEC. Unbelievable.

Following up on a Security Systems News story I wrote back in November, The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International announced today (Jan. 26) the approval of an American National Standard to provide a standard data exchange for the electronic transmission of information between alarm monitoring companies and public safety answering points. Called the External Alarm Interface Information Exchange program, the new ANS was approved on Jan. 15 and is now an accepted standard and should, according to Pam Petrow of Vector Security be a boon to the industry. "I think it creates a great opportunity for the alarm industry and should be very cost-effective for the 911 industry to implement,” Petrow said back in Novemeber when the program was entering the ANSI standards testing process. The new ANS can be downloaded here.

I got a call from Linda Bailey at the NFPA bright and early this morning. She said registration is on track for the June show in Chicago. The early sell out of the block of rooms at the hotel where the convention is being held (see previous post) is the result of early registration by exhibitors. "It's looking good for the show in Chicago," she said.

Maybe one of the most under-reported and least-understood stories out there is the one about the move to IPv6, from our current IPv4 Internet addressing system. Essentially, the world will eventually run out of IPv4 IP addresses (the line of code that identifies where a device lives in relation to the Internet) and we'll be forced to move to IPv6, which offers addresses with much longer strings of numbers and letters and therefore opens the amount of addresses to something more than trillions and trillions. But what do we actually have to do to prepare for this switchover? When does it have to be done? Will it affect your average installer and end user? How will it affect network security? These are questions I get varying answers on. Here's a story I wrote about IPv6 late in 2007, for reference. Nothing much seems to have changed since then. Other than one release from Axis that mentioned IPv6 capability, I've seen virtually no security manufacturer even mention IPv6. I'm not sure why. I'm reminded of this mostly because of an article I came across today positing that IPv6 might make networks less secure. This is the exact opposite of the information I've been getting, that security is built into IPv6 and it is inherently more secure than IPv4. From my story: Also, Nilsson emphasized the added security features IPv6 offers, and its ability to make installation easier. So, who's right? I understand about half of this, but it appears to be a primer for network security during the IPv6 conversion. Here's a white paper from 3Com (who will be in physical security shortly, I'm told), which points out security vulnerabilities, but is pretty vague. Here's a white paper from SIA, but it's a pdf and is cumbersome for my poor version of Safari. Probably works in Firefox. According to this White House memorandum from 2005, the federal government was supposed to be totally IPv6 compliant by June 30, 2008. Did this happen? Did anybody check? I haven't heard anything to the contrary, but then I run across press releases from Verizon where they talk about upgrading the Army to IPv6. Do they not count as part of the federal government? In short, it seems prudent to make sure your people are up to speed on IPv6, especially if you're doing work with the government, but it doesn't look like the security product manufacturers are in a huge hurry to make things IPv6 compliant. Will this matter? I'm not sure.