• More scandalous revelations about Kabul embassy security

    The State Department outsourced the security of the U.S. embassy in Kabul to a private security company; the company cut costs by extending shifts from 8 to 12 hours; one security contractor had to be forcibly removed from a brothel during working hours

  • Most expensive RAF aircraft in history takes to the skies

    More than ten years ago BAE signed a contract to upgrade, by 2000, 21 Nimrod MR2s — the last De Havilland Comet airframes left flying in the world — so that they can perform antisubmarine duties; it is now nine years later, and the number of Nimrods was reduced from 21 to 9; the first of them, now renamed Nimrod MRA4, has just taken to the skies; cost to retrofit one plane: $660 million at current rates (not to mention to price for the original planes); the cost of the 9 Nimrods is equal to the cost of 3½ space shuttles

  • Surveillance software solves security snag

    Network security monitoring is currently limited by the inability of operators to recall the relationships between more than about 40 cameras in a network; the new software will automatically integrate data from thousands of security cameras in a video surveillance network into a single sensor, eliminating existing problems with huge information overloads

  • Cocoon Data: Securing Internet communication

    Cocoon Data’s Secure Envelopes is a way of electronically “wrapping” sensitive files, e-mail attachments, and other data to keep them from being seen by unintended eyes

  • Locata Corporation: Location hot spots -- beyond GPS

    A conversation with Locata CEO Nunzio Gambale; “It has been an adventure and we have already come a long way. I hope to live long enough to see positioning technology implemented in a place like New York City to be able to locate the position of someone in an emergency down to a couple of feet. That’s my dream”

  • Catalyst Interactive: Training for the security industry

    A conversation with Catalyst Interactive managing director Ken Kroeger; “What the public sees are the people on the front line, but its important to remember that putting those people on the frontline requires a fair bit of investment to their training. That’s were we come into play — to make sure that those people have the skills and the attitude they need to do their jobs”

  • Airborne laser ready for flight tests

    The coming months will be important for the airborne laser — the multibillion-dollar laser built into a customized Boeing 747 will try to shoot a ballistic missile as it rises above the clouds

  • U.K. orders helmet-mounted displays

    BAE’s The Q-Sight display is a key element of the Gunner’s Remote Sighting System (GRSS), a system that will allow the image from a machine-gun-mounted thermal weapon sight to be displayed remotely on a see-through display mounted on the weapon operator’s helmet

  • Home power plants project unveiled in Germany

    Two German companies unveil plans for installing gas-fired power plants in people’s basements; in the coming year the program will install 100,000 of the mini plants, producing among them 2,000 megawatts of electricity, the same as two nuclear plants

  • Instantly dimmable bullet-resistant windows

    Company awarded a contact to develop instantly dimmable bullet-resistant windows for military and law enforcement vehicles; company says the new product will have its initial application in the global counter-terrorism market for government VIP Armored Personnel Vehicles, but that it also has real value in the civilian VIP market

  • Smiths Detection to unveil new millimeter-wave scanner

    The company’s new eqo scanner increases throughput and occupies only a fraction of the floor space of conventional scanners

  • ioimage to show new IP camera with video analytics

    The new camera, the sc1dn, is priced at $990 and aimed at mid-size entities

  • New data protection approach

    New data security system developed by Israeli researchers automatically protects sensitive data because it travels with the data even when it is saved to removable devices like a USB flash drive

  • ShotSpotter, Inc. says its technology saves lives

    The Mountain View, California-based company says that in the first half of 2009 its technology saved the lives of 57 gunshot victims; this represents a 138 percent increase from the first half of 2008

  • Using lasers in nuclear decommissioning

    High-power lasers could remove contaminated surfaces of concrete and cut up metal pipework and process vessels inside nuclear reactors, or other contaminated environments