Genetec Andrew Elvish Interview

Security Middle East had the opportunity to catch up with Genetec at the Intersec Dubai in 2023.

Andrew Elvish, Genetec’s head of marketing discussed what the future has in store for the company, including the innovative Streamvault Edge product, the Middle Easts’ relationship with the cloud.

What are the Biggest Challenges for the Middle East Market?

“The impact of cyber security on physical security networks.”

Andrew Elvish expressed that C-level decision makers are struggling to begin the conversation regarding cybersecurity and find it difficult to understand the relationship between physical security networks and the need for cyber security.

“A lot of them don’t know how to go about improving their cybersecurity game,” added Andrew, discussing how computers were at every level of a business, usually part of a network and as a result, many devices that are overlooked prove to be vulnerabilities that go completely under a companies radar.

“IP Cameras are just computers with a visual censor. So, how do we start the conversation about that vulnerability? The longer physical security people are not in that discussion, the more physical security networks can be degraded and become vectors for cyber security attacks.”

According to Andrew, a unified solution is the answer – though Genetec have in the past been all about protecting people and assets, they seek to do so whilst incorporating further protection to cyber-vulnerabilities.

“People have come to trust the Genetec solution, though we’re about protecting people and assets, we also think about that cyber world.”

What Solutions have Genetec introduced?

Looking at the future of the industry and proposing solutions to these cyber vulnerabilities, Andrew Elvish stated:

“There’s a lot going on right now, overrall, our unified platform security centre continues to be the industry standard, for, really, what we can do to provide a very open but cybersecure network. […] What we’re seeing in the middle east is a continued renaissance to move to the cloud. People are not especially comfortable with full on cloud deployment of physical security networks. So what we’ve brought to market is a true hybrid platform – something that we call Streamvault Edge.”

Streamvault Edge markets itself as a true IoT platform, which takes a fully customizable approach scaling from a complete on premises solution to being fully on the cloud. An added benefit of this, is that the constantly live platform allows for back-end updates and always accessible security.

What is next for most businesses, following the State of Security Report?

The main takeaway from the State of Security Report, according to Andrew Elvish, is the way in which many companies main goal in the next few years are – all in some manner – modernization.

All companies are looking for more micromanagement over their systems – by unifying resources and controlling access, companies will continue that path of modernization and gain a better understanding of what’s happening within their networks.

It’s clear companies understand that modernizing their cyber-operations is necessary, the next step is openly discussing the next steps with physical security teams and implementing new ways of managing what can and cannot connect to business networks.

Genetec are one of the sponsors of the Security Middle East Conference event in May, and will be sharing insights into implementing ones business into the cloud at the conference.