As I fly home after the show, it’s hard not to think about all of the work waiting for my return. At the same time, I’m still reveling in what was a fantastic four days in Atlanta, both on the show floor and at the various events we attended each evening. Hands down, it was the best ASIS show I’ve been to in years!
First, let’s start at the end of my blog title with THE INSPIRING. ASIS is second only to our own Users’ Conference in the number of clients we get to meet face-to-face as we share the latest advancements in our products and services and, more importantly, get to find out how they’re doing with Perspective. To the client who shared just how much of a budget he garnered thanks to the justification provided by Perspective, I’m still picking my jaw up off the floor. To the client who shared the difference between won and lost court cases (that difference being Perspective always leading to the documentation needed for a win!), hearing you speak about the significance of our software was a story I immediately shared with many members of our team (and look forward to working with you to share with others in some sort of case study or article). And to the client who’s planning his third trip to Edmonton for hands-on training (now that his responsibilities for Perspective have expanded from user to administrator), thanks for being brave enough to make the trip up north… again. I wish all of our clients would give their power users the same opportunity… after all, it’s three days of FREE hands-on training! To everyone who stopped by, thanks for reminding us why we do what we do… for sharing the important role that Perspective plays in your security organization.
Next up… THE SURPRISING. I’ll admit it… I didn’t go into ASIS 2014 with a ton of optimism. Philadelphia (2012) and Chicago (2013) were disappointing, and at ISC West in Vegas, I very much thought, “Here’s where all the ASIS attendees have gone. ISC has finally replaced ASIS as the industry event of the year, even on the end user side.” Not so fast! From the crowds at Canada Night and Texas Night on Sunday (both sponsored and attended by PPM), to the crowds on the show floor Monday through Wednesday, to the people packing both our booth and our Incident Command Center, we got to see old friends, make new ones, and often hear the very significant words, ‘We got budget for an incident management solution, we’ve chosen PPM, and we’ll have a PO in {insert company-specific timeframe}!’ Incident management software is officially on everyone’s radar, proven by statements like this and supported by sessions like Tuesday’s “Security Metrics: Leveraging Performance Measures to Gain Efficiencies and Demonstrate Return on Investment” where the importance of sharing security data with the C-suite through meaningful, reliable, and clear metrics was stressed alongside the value of metrics as ‘persuasive and justifiable rationale for decision-making.’ If you haven’t already downloaded the study that was done by the ASIS Foundation, entitled Persuading Senior Management with Effective, Evaluated Security Metrics, I encourage you to do so. Don’t be daunted by the 216 pages… we put together a summary that you can find here, and the Security Metrics Evaluation Tool they came up with is well worth a look.
On to THE NEW. Our flagship at ASIS 2014 was, without a doubt, our Incident Command Center. Hosted in a meeting room on the show floor, we held scheduled presentations and impromptu demos showcasing how Perspective, well established as the leading incident reporting and investigation management solution, can also play a pivotal role in security operations centers where organizations are looking to streamline interfaces, consolidate data, and… here’s where it gets really unique… capture the event data across all sorts of mission-critical and mission-essential products for future analysis, trending, and reporting… the likes of which only Perspective can do. Working with our partners—Guardly, Microsoft Global Security, MIR3, SureView, and Winsted—we demonstrated how Perspective interacts, communicates, and integrates with a wide range of solutions for complete, integrated incident management. Think of us as at the top of the systems pyramid, managing response and minimizing impact through our dispatching solution, capturing all of the event data for reporting and analytics, and if necessary, escalating to incident status, and potentially to investigators, for further follow-up.
Beyond our ICC, we also had the chance to demo, for the first time ever, Perspective Version 4.5 with new pin mapping (the best possible way to visualize and drill into incident hot spots), enhanced analytics (streamlined for the base user and with new options like pivot tables for the advanced user), and custom reports (your logo, your standard format, your vision for what the report should look like and encompass, top to bottom, headers and footers included). Last of all, we introduced our new Virtual Analyst service, an invaluable new option for anyone who doesn’t have the time (or people!) to generate the reports they need. Any client in our hosted environment can now subscribe to receive routine reports (including monthly, quarterly, and annual options) or call us up to request a specific report on demand (“My analyst just quit and my quarterly report is due tomorrow…HELP!”).
ASIS is always about meeting old friends, showcasing new products, and welcoming new clients. This year, it was an energizing mix of excitement, validation, and inspiration as our ICC demos were done to standing room only crowds, our clients were free with their hugs and kudos (and enhancement requests!), and our team was smiling ear-to-ear at the end of each day. On that note, big thanks go out to everyone on our PPM team, led by our Director of Marketing & Communications, Cora Bolianatz, who ensured that all of the pieces fell into place. Well worth singling out… John Fernandes, your clients were singling me out to share how fantastic you are. That’s huge! Lenora Thomas, as our Director of Customer Service, you get the ‘Godsend’ award of the show. At least two different clients described you with that adjective, and many, many more were just as effusive with their praise.
The countdown to ASIS 2015 in Anaheim is on!
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