Physical security management system

• US 20060059557A1
• Filed: 10/13/2005
• Published: 03/16/2006
• 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
• Granted Patent: US 8,272,053 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 726/22
• 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 physical security aggregation and correlation system comprising:

a plurality of sensors;

a sensor report aggregator connected to the plurality of sensors; and

a security reference model connected to the sensor report aggregator.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the sensor report aggregator outputs hypotheses descriptive of a situation based on reports from the plurality of sensors.

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

4. The system of claim 3, wherein an alarm level is based on a certainty of the hypothesis and a severity of the hypothesis.

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

a facility model;

a security model; and

/or

a plurality of attack models.

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

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

8. The system of claim 6 wherein the user interface is a graphical interface.

9. The system of claim 6, wherein the plurality of sensors comprises motion detectors, badge readers, door status indicators, biometric detectors, video cameras, network logon information, trackers, radar, IR detectors, metal detectors, object recognition devices, and/or the like.

10. The system of claim 6, 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.

12. The method of claim 2, further comprising assigning a probability to at least one hypothesis.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein an alarm level of the at least one hypothesis is based on a certitude of the hypothesis and a severity of the hypothesis.

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

11. A method for aggregating reports of physical activities comprising:

providing a plurality of sensors;

providing a security model;

aggregating a number of reports of physical activities from the plurality of sensors; and

proposing a number of physical hypotheses.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein a hypothesis may be developed by comparing the number of physical hypotheses with the security model.

16. A physical security system comprising:

a plurality of sensors;

a sensor report aggregator connected to the plurality of sensors; and

a security reference model connected to the sensor report aggregator.

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

a facility model;

physical attack models; and

/or

a physical security model.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the sensor report aggregator comprises a hypothesis developer.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the sensor report aggregator further comprises a hypothesis evaluator.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising a user interface connected to the sensor report aggregator.