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Monitoring Matters


Monitoring Matters

Aired grievances

March 13, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

A dozen lawsuits later and it sounds like Airbnb has finally put the kibosh on indoor security cameras in its policies. I’m not an aficionado of the rental properties lifestyle but I suppose I assumed that it was, at the very least, frowned upon beforehand to install security cameras indoors at places like this. Obviously, bathrooms and bedrooms were already a no-go but having a bunch of Norman Bates’ peeping on tenants while having a somewhat ambiguous policy on indoor surveillance...

Airbnb, Andrew Witty, security cameras, Surveillance, UnitedHealthcare, Wyze


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Thrillogy

March 6, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

The return of dreaded continuity. I swear that three is our lucky number and this will be the last time I discuss ransomware in this space, at least for a little while. BlackCat/ALPHV is apparently falling apart this week if you’ve been following that story closely. The official word is that they stole the $22 million payment from UnitedHealthcare and collectively ghosted the world. Which, you know, that money is kind of already stolen? I mean, that’s what blackmail basically is, guys....

ALPHV, Artificial Intelligence (AI), BlackCat, Cybersecurity, Ransomware, UnitedHealthcare


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United they fall

February 28, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

Oh man, I really don’t like doing the same topic two weeks in a row, but we have to talk about ransomware again. It should be about the ADT webcast, but we’ll save that one for next week, as a treat. Instead, today we’re going to take our medicine and I get to say I told you so while discussing the ransomware attack on UnitedHealthcare by BlackCat. You’ll remember BlackCat (ALPHV) because we’ve covered it before, but also because in this very blog spot last week I...

ADT, ALPHV, BlackCat, FTC, Ransomware, United States Department of Justice (DOJ), UnitedHealthcare


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Bit defenders

February 21, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

This week international members of law enforcement patted themselves on the back for slaying the proverbial dragon of LockBit, but in reality, it’s just one head of the Hydra. I don’t mean to lessen or downplay that accomplishment either. This has been a serious blow to global cybercriminal activity and a victory against destabilizing actions taken by politically aligned criminal organizations (because let’s not pretend the ransomware gangs are largely state sponsored)....

Artificial Intelligence (AI), BlackCat, Cl0p, cybercriminals, data breach, LockBit, MOVEit, Ransomware


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Cupid de Locke

February 14, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

It’s Valentine's Day and I’d love to mention that I have a sweetheart of a topic to share this week, but I’m sorry to say it’s left me a little brokenhearted. Since the beginning of February, I’ve been watching a lot of Q4 2023 reports roll out and while we can still safely call it the year of AI, it’s also the year of the residential security market falling flat on its face. I talked about this a bit in my last blog post where I discussed ADT...

ADT, Assa Abloy, Jay Geldmacher, Residential Security, Resideo


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Goodbye, Mr. Sunshine

January 31, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

After a week of being under the weather I could use a little sun to brighten my outlook. Unfortunately, following some news last week, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. I’ll get to that point in a moment, since it’s a little detour from normal security news. The actual news I wanted to discuss this week is the often discussed but still unreleased ADT smart home security system made in collaboration with Google. It so happened that my boss asked me earlier this week what was...

ADT, ADT Solar, Google, Google Nest, Residential, smart home


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Eyes wide open

January 17, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

Now that CES is behind us let’s step back from smart home security products for a minute and talk about AI-based surveillance platforms and what an impact they’re making. By impact of course I mean that with AI everything being so en vogue it’s been particularly popular for surveillance where it’s being used to do everything from authenticated visitors and license plates to identifying dangerous patterns and harmful devices. That last one is especially notable since...

AEGIX Global, AI-based, Rich Onofrio, Shooter Detection Systems (SDS), Surveillance, ZeroEyes


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Palm d’Oor

January 10, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

It’s CES 2024, and what that means is a whole lot of residential and public-facing security products being introduced with the new year. I think if I had to pick what stands out the most in the crowd it’s the continued line of smart home products we see evolving and branching out. Not all of these are security-focused products, but most of them are security adjacent. Also, really, if we’ve learned anything in these past few years it’s that if your device is smart,...

2024, Amazon One Enterprise, Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Phillips, smart home, smart lock


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With apologies to Carnac the Magnificent

January 3, 2024Ken Showers, Managing Editor

It’s finally 2024, and that means that I’ll be making good on my threats to discuss predictions and upcoming trends in the security industry this year. Not my predictions mind you, I will be putting other people’s predictions on blast anonymously, but I promise it will be just as entertaining. First up, a rapid surge of Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption by various businesses in 2024? That’s an easy one to predict of course, It’s surging right now! And was...

Artificial Intelligence (AI), convergence, Multifactor Authentication (MFA), Physical Security, security industry, Shooter Detection Systems (SDS), Stephen Carney


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Video analytics confirmed mommy was kissing Santa Claus

December 20, 2023Ken Showers, Managing Editor

That’s right everyone, I’m back from vacation, and you know what that means? Yeah, I’m ready to have another vacation from my vacation. Allow me to both physically and metaphorically crack my knuckles because I have two more of these blogs to knock out in 2023. Once the new year starts, I’m contractually obligated to spend at least a month talking about everyone’s 2024 predictions before getting swept off to new adventures. It’s probably going to be about...

2024, Artificial Intelligence (AI), biometrics, facial recognition, Federal Trade Commission, Ransomware, Rite Aid


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