April 15th, 2008
GE Homeland Protection Inc., a business of GE Security, Inc. and a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of the General Electric Co. recently announced it has established a strategic initiative to promote greater interoperability among security products globally. As part of this initiative, GE Security intends to organize collaborative industry events to pursue broader integration of advanced security technologies.
The goal of the initiative is the creation of an industry changing free and open security sensor communication protocol. Ultimately, it's expected that the initiative will result in integration of security products, down to individual sensor data fusion levels, that could broadly deliver increased security, reduced operational costs and enhanced customer experiences.
A key component of this effort is expected to be a new software communication module called the Detection Systems Fusion Protocol (DSFP) that would reside on security products and serve as an aid to interoperability. GE Security intends for DSFP to become a free and open protocol that could be adopted by any manufacturer to allow their security products seamless plug-and-play connections to DSFP powered networks.
"GE Security is pleased to be leading this effort to bring potentially dramatic improvements to the way in which security products and technologies are integrated," said Jay Hill, CTO, GE Security's Homeland Protection business. "An outgrowth of our Checkpoint of the Future vision, we expect this industry initiative to ultimately be able to offer the potential for improved security, operational cost reductions and greater passenger convenience."
A DSFP laboratory is currently being populated with security sensors at GE Security's Magnetics Center of Excellence research and development facility in San Diego. This lab will be a development site for the industry initiative as well as a proving ground for resultant integrations.
Through this strategic initiative, GE Security hopes to be able to offer improvements to the integration of advanced technologies to create highly automated security solutions. GE Security plans to leverage experience derived from its Checkpoint of the Future development work, including the fielding of the first integrated advanced technology aviation security solution designed to support the emerging U.S. Registered Traveler program, the SRT Kiosk.