SSI Spotlights 2020 Security Solutions Awards Winners

The HALO IoT Smart Sensor 2.0 by IPVideo Corp. is now being used by more than 650 dealers who have installed in thousands of K12 schools, universities, hospitals, hotels and commercial buildings.

One particular school district in Georgia was looking to address three main areas in their 140 schools as part of a district wide security refresh project.

1. Teachers unions fought to keep cameras out of the classroom and they couldn’t be used in privacy areas or staff offices.

2. They needed to address vaping, drug use and fighting in their bathrooms and locker rooms.

3. They had concerns about active shooters on campus and properly identify location to protect and direct staff and emergency responders.

HALO addressed all of their needs for vaping, loud disturbances, identifying gunshot locations, deploying emergency communications and providing a help call system for students and staff that didn’t require every individual to carry a personal device.

The latest HALO 2.0 provides many new features and enhancements to the prior award-winning product built on chemical, environmental and basic audible level sensors. This release transforms HALO in the eyes of the market to a comprehensive security and emergency response device that can be used in all situations which require privacy or immediate response. By providing near real-time emergency alerts in crisis situations and integrating this technology with video management (VMS) and access control systems, HALO Smart Sensor can assist organizations with more robust situational awareness.

The major new features in this release include:

• Spoken Key Word Alerting – Individuals under duress can now utilize a spoken keyword to send instant alerts to security for help in privacy or other areas to get security personnel’s immediate attention. Now a student in their dorm room, a hotel housekeeper, a patient under duress, a student in a hazing incident or your elderly parent living by themselves can alert security to an attack or emergency situation in real time by shouting a keyword like “HALO HELP”. The audio is not being recorded or sent to the cloud so that total privacy is maintained. The alerts are automatically sent to security for immediate response. To help diffuse situations, the alerts also trigger an audible message that an emergency has been declared and security has been notified.

• Gunshot Detection – As a comprehensive security and emergency response device, active shooter technology is now included as part of HALO’s audio analytics to help keep individuals, campuses, and businesses be safer. When a gunshot is detected, the active shooter detection system within HALO instantly alerts users to the location of shots and simultaneously sends this information by SMS text message, email and via other third-party alert systems which can also trigger a lockdown. To help diffuse situations, the alerts also trigger an audible message that an emergency has been declared and security has been notified.

• Enhanced Audio Analytics – Another new feature is the addition of machine learning capabilities to establish audible level “normalcies” to be used to catch indicators of possible violence. The enhanced analytics learns the normal audio levels and allows security professionals to receive an alert when these levels exceed a threshold above normal values.

• Vape Detection Enhancements – Individuals who are trying to mask their vaping and vaping with THC activity with aerosols will now be flagged with the unique Masking Signature identifier which has been added to the HALO library.