Physical security management system

• US 8,272,053 B2
• Filed: 10/13/2005
• Issued: 09/18/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/18/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Markham, Thomas R., Heimerdinger, Walter
• Primary Examiner(s): ARMOUCHE, HADI S
• Application Number:
  US11/249,622
• Publication Number:
  US 20060059557A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,532 Days
• Field of Search: 726/2, 726/22, 726/23, 726/25
• US Class Current: 726/23
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 9/37 using biometric data, e.g. fingerprints, iris scans or voice recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 29/188 Data fusion; cooperative systems, e.g. voting among different detectors
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 31/00 Predictive alarm systems characterised by extrapolation or other computation using updated historic data

Abstract

A physical security system having a plurality of sensors and a sensor report aggregator. The sensors may detect a large number of physical activities. The aggregator may cluster a large number of detected reports to a small number of sets of reports. The sets of reports may be reduced to hypotheses. From the hypotheses, the aggregator may develop hypotheses about the physical environment which the sensors are monitoring in view of a security reference model. The security reference model may include, but not be limited to, facility models, physical security models, and/or attack models. The hypotheses may have probabilities assigned to them according to their certitude of likelihood and severity of danger.

Claims

1. A security system for protecting a physical installation, the security system comprising:

an access controller for controlling access to the physical installation comprising access control rules;

a plurality of physical sensors in communication with the controller, wherein the plurality of physical sensors sense physical threats to the physical installation;

a sensor report aggregator connected to the plurality of sensors and in communication with the access controller; and

a security reference model connected to the sensor report aggregator, wherein the security reference model contains information about the protected physical installation including information about the protected physical installation'"'"'s security goals;

wherein the sensor report aggregator outputs hypotheses descriptive of a threat situation based on combined reports from the plurality of sensors to the access controller.

2. The security system of claim 1, wherein a probability of the hypotheses being true is based on the reports from the plurality of sensors.

3. The security system of claim 2, wherein an alarm level is based on a certainty of the hypothesis and a severity of the threat situation described in the hypothesis.

4. The security system of claim 3, wherein the security reference model comprises:

a facility model;

a security model; and

/or

a plurality of attack models.

5. The security system of claim 4, further comprising a user interface connected to the sensor report aggregator.

6. The security system of claim 5, wherein the user interface comprises an alarm mechanism.

7. The security system of claim 5 wherein the user interface is a graphical interface.

8. The security system of claim 5, wherein the plurality of sensors comprises motion detectors, badge readers, door status indicators, biometric detectors, video cameras, trackers, radar, IR detectors, metal detectors, and/or object recognition devices.

9. The security system of claim 5, wherein:

the physical report aggregator is for clustering a number of reports into one or more sets of reports; and

the number of reports is greater than a number of sets of reports.

10. A method for aggregating reports of physical activities related to physical threats to a protected physical installation, comprising:

providing an access controller in communication with a sensor report aggregator for controlling access to the physical installation, the access controller comprising access control rules;

providing a plurality of physical sensors in communication with the controller, wherein the plurality of physical sensors sense physical threats to the physical installation;

providing a security model containing information about the protected physical installation including information about the protected physical installation'"'"'s security goals;

aggregating at the sensor report aggregator a number of reports of physical activities from the plurality of sensors; and

proposing to the access controller a number of physical hypotheses describing a threat situation.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising assigning a probability to at least one hypothesis.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein an alarm level of the at least one hypothesis is based on a certitude of the hypothesis and a severity of the threat situation described in the hypothesis.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the security model is based on a facility model, a physical security model and/or a plurality of attack models.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein a hypothesis is developed by comparing the number of physical hypotheses with the security model.

15. A security system for protecting a physical installation comprising:

an access controller comprising access control rules;

a plurality of physical sensors comprising motion detectors, badge readers, door status indicators, biometric detectors, video cameras, trackers, radar, IR detectors, metal detectors, and/or object recognition devices in communication with the controller, wherein the sensors sense physical threats to the physical installation;

a sensor report aggregator connected to the plurality of sensors and in communication with the access controller; and

a security reference model connected to the sensor report aggregator, wherein the security reference model contains information about the protected physical installation including information about the protected physical installation'"'"'s security goals; and

wherein the sensor report aggregator comprises a hypothesis developer that outputs hypotheses descriptive of a threat situation to the access controller.

16. The security system of claim 15, wherein the security reference model comprises:

a facility model;

physical attack models; and

/or

a physical security model.

17. The security system of claim 15, wherein the sensor report aggregator further comprises a hypothesis evaluator that evaluates the severity of the threat situation.

18. The security system of claim 17, further comprising a user interface connected to the sensor report aggregator.