Monitoring Matters
Honey, I shrunk the company
February 12, 2025Ken Showers, Managing Editor
This week in industry news, Honeywell honeycombs into three distinct hives full of busy bees, but the buzz around the move indicates a bumble.
Last week Honeywell made good on months of speculation that the company would bow to pressures from an activist investor and spun out into three separate divisions. Those divisions are its aerospace, advanced materials, and home automation divisions.
So, while this split rolls back the meter a bit on Honeywell’s conglomeration, it is also theoretically...
Challenger Deep
January 29, 2025Ken Showers, Managing Editor
It was the best of times, but mostly it was the worst of times, especially if you were Nvidia this week following the meteoric rise of AI model DeepSeek and the massacre of the tech company’s market value.
After releasing its platform less than two years after forming, DeepSeek quickly made waves in the past month gaining a following of techno-faithful singing the praises of the little chat bot that could. Moreover, they did it for a lot less money than competitors like OpenAI...
To-go order
January 15, 2025Ken Showers, Managing Editor
This week on Monitoring Matters, the threat of prison violence delivered hot and ready in 30 minutes or less, or else it’s free.
At least that’s the concern according to a pair of watchdogs keeping tabs on a pair of England high-security prisons. In a report by the BBC, Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor told government officials that weapon smuggling using drones was now commonplace thanks to a lax airspace being maintained above the maximum-security facilities.
While the...
Living in interesting times
December 31, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor
If you’re reading this, congratulations! You made it to 2025, and that means you get to set about fulfilling whatever resolutions you’ve made.
Time to hit the gym, or pick up that instrument, you know, all the classics. One of my personal resolutions this year is covering news in the security industry that gets overlooked or receives less consideration among other more popular topics. I was inspired by our 2025 predictions article where Stephen Burd, vice president of Essence Security,...
Hanging by a thread
December 11, 2024SSN Staff
To paraphrase a popular children’s cartoon of the past few decades, “If I had a nickel for every time I discussed an assassination on this blog, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.”
Last week, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was gunned down by an assassin on his way to an investor meeting. I could lay out the moral implications at great length in this blog, but that’s not terribly important...
Mr. Tariff-ic
November 27, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor
I was going to write about 2025 predictions this week, but in the spirit of not supporting Christmas music and decorations hitting stores before Thanksgiving is over, I’m going to let that topic stew a while longer.
Instead, I wanted to touch briefly this week on tariffs. If you’ve been following any sort of news, then I’m certain that’s come up in some fashion. I don’t usually linger on political topics in this blog for the same reason you shouldn’t lick the...
Bread and circus
November 13, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor
Not to distract the masses from any other topics that may be occupying their thoughts, but in the blog this week I really am going to talk about bread.
There’s a new ransomware group making the rounds lately and if you’re wondering what they’ve done to be singled out among a sea of cyber ne’er-do-wells then I’d have to say, it’s probably their preferred form of payment. A group calling itself Hellcat has claimed to have compromised Schneider Electric, a French...
Up in smoke
October 30, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor
In the last stretch of this year’s election cycle the candidates are really burning up the trail, at least the parts of it not already on fire.
That’s right in several states political violence rose to the level of arson as ballot boxes were set on fire in Oregon, Washington, and even Arizona recently. The good news is, sometimes we learn our lessons and there were cameras monitoring a few of those sites.
In fact, a suspect is already in custody in the Arizona case, and I expect...
October not so surprising
October 16, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor
Anyone who would dare saunter up to me to complain about Christmas decorations going in the stores too early this year has never worked at a news desk in an election year.
That’s right, every four years Santa delivers coal to a reporter’s inbox for 12-14 months straight. I cannot explain to anyone reading this the joy I feel knowing that I won’t be up all-night waiting for confirmation on results in local races, or God forbid, sitting at a campaign headquarters, or any of the...
A more moderate climate
October 2, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor
I am opening my blog this week with an apology to my poor Editor, Cory Harris, whose coattails might be a little more damp than usual on my account.
Good-natured Cory stood in for me during this year’s GSX conference in Florida, a show that was by all accounts productive and full of interesting new products, features, software, and partnerships. All well and good if you minded the weather. That’s right, the Security Systems News (SSN) team got chased out of Orlando by Hurricane Helene,...