28 June 2018

Preventing skylights from creating access points for intruders

In order to allow more natural light to enter buildings such as modern offices, shopping malls and museums, glass ceilings and skylights have become increasingly popular.

These attractive design features can unfortunately create an easier way for intruders to access a building, often missed by the security systems. We have seen a rising demand from our customers to protect their premises against intruders entering from the roof. Intruders can take advantage of flat roofs by using air conditioning units and skylights as a form of shelter, making it more difficult for them to be identified. Intruders can carefully plan their break in, and can get closer to valuable assets by entering through a skylight. Our 2D LiDAR, RLS-2020 provides a perfect solution for protecting skylights providing a high-density detection that not only detects people but also objects and material being dropped down.

When connected to a dome camera, the area of intrusion can trigger the correct camera preset to give the best visual evidence of the event.

Introducing Masaya Kida, Managing Director of OPTEX EMEA

In January 2018, Masaya Kida took the role of Co-Managing Director alongside Jacques Vaarre, who has helped established OPTEX EMEA headquarters for Security products over the last four years. In July, Jacques will move into a new senior role with OPTEX Americas, and Masaya will be taking up the role of Managing Director.

Masaya has been working at OPTEX for over 20 years and has held a number of management and senior positions for the company, both in Japan and overseas. He started his career in the automatic door division at OPTEX global headquarters, located near Kyoto,Japan. Masaya moved to the USA in 1997 to establish and manage the entrance division business. In 2008, when OPTEX acquired Secumatic BV, a well-established automatic door sensor company based in the Netherlands, Masaya moved with his family to Rotterdam and worked at what became OPTEX Technologies BV for five years. This role gave him the opportunity to work with customers across the EMEA region, appreciating a variety of cultures, and even learning some Dutch. He returned to Japan and in 2014, Masaya started working for OPTEX’s security division and led the product development and roadmap for this division.

During this time, Masaya worked closely with the EMEA team and customers so he felt at ease when relocating to the United Kingdom earlier this year.

“I am delighted to be working with the EMEA team. My mission as Managing Director is to continue strengthening our presence in the region and support our customers both on the commercial and technical side. We have increased the number of native speakers in our team to deliver a better localised support and we are working with our technology partners to help provide reliable intrusion detection solutions. We are also bringing new lines of products which diversify our sensor portfolio such as the vehicle detection sensor and counter.”

Masaya and the team are attending Security Essen in September.

In the meantime, if you want to contact him please send us a request here.


Adding an outdoor curtain PIR on an IP CCTV system: our experience

We recently moved our OPTEX (Europe) office, which provided our technical team with the opportunity to design and install a security system to protect both our office and warehouse. The system is a combination of access control, IP intrusion detection and CCTV system.

Our technical colleagues planned the location of our long range outdoor PIRs and our laser sensors all around the building and identified one small, narrow area at the back of the building that would not be covered by the detection area of the long range sensors. The most effective solution for this narrow area was our new outdoor curtain PIR, the BX Shield.

In order to add the BX Shield onto the IP security system, the team connected the sensor to our IP module PIE-1. The optional back-box for the wired BX-Shield modules proved to be the perfect dimensions to fit the PiE-1. Adding the PiE-1 onto the BX-Shield sensors, allows the sensor to be integrated with all VMS platforms that have integrated OPTEX Redwall Event code.

Being able to connect our short-range outdoor sensors such as the BX Shield into the rest of our IP system enabled our team to create a complete security solution tailored to the specific layout of the site.

All our wired outdoor sensors could be connected to the PiE-1, for more information about the module click here.