Although the 13th Edition of the ASIS European Security Conference at The Hague is still in full swing, Nedap is already looking back on a successful event.
As Gold Sponsor, the company was closely involved in the organisation of the ASIS Welcome Party. In addition, Nedap’s CEO Ruben Wegman took part in Wednesday’s opening plenary panel discussion on ‘The Future of Security Technology’.
Six months after the decision taken by ASIS and Nedap to add an informal networking event to the conference programme, the ASIS Welcome Party – powered by Nedap – took place at The World Forum in The Hague, Netherlands on Tuesday 1 April. 350 enthusiastic security professionals caught up on developments in the security sector.
ASIS International president Richard Widup at the Welcome Party
At the beginning of the evening, the multi-talented Niek Boes played the role of his spectacular character, which party attendees soon referred to as ‘The Robotic Man’. Delegates also enjoyed the musical performance of Keys & Colors, who played requests during the evening.
The Future of Security Technology
On Wednesday 2 April from 10.30 am-11.20 am, Nedap CEO Ruben Wegman contributed to the plenary panel discussion on ‘The Future of Security Technology’.
This session was moderated by British journalist Brian Sims BA (Hons) Hon FSyI (Media Solutions Manager for UBM Live’s Security and Fire Portfolio) and also featured Ray Mauritsson (president and CEO at Axis Communications) and Roland Billeter, president of continental Europe at Tyco Integrated Fire and Security.
During the discussions, Wegman explained his vision on the role of hardware in physical security, to which he cited the importance of a change in the thinking of ‘traditional’ security suppliers.
“Looking at the current security market, you see that little has changed in the last decades,” stated Wegman. “That’s remarkable, especially when you consider that a security system handles huge amounts of data and functions as one of the major IT systems within a company.”
Nedap CEO Ruben Wegman (left) chats with colleagues at the ASIS European Security Conference Welcome Party
Wegman continued: “That’s quite a paradox, because in physical security hardware is still leading. Controllers are often dedicated to perform only one functionality, such as access control. This is rarely beneficial to clients, who often encounter inflexible systems where expansion is unnecessarily expensive. A patchwork of systems may be the end result.”
Nedap’s CEO added: “Taking this into consideration, it’s important that physical security systems start to behave in a similar fashion to IT systems, where generic hardware and open standards have already been a logical concept for many years. For the future of physical security I foresee the same principle.”
Wegman is adamant that generic hardware and open standards in security are the only way to ensure that security systems can easily be tailor-made according to customer requirements and be easily integrated with existing IT systems.”
In conclusion, Wegman explained: “The security industry has to invest in making generic hardware and standardising software so that customers receive the freedom they need to roll out a scalable and flexible system on a global basis.”
The 14th edition of the ASIS European Security Conference takes place in Frankfurt between 29-31 March 2015.
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