Measures taken to protect tangible assets from harm or unauthorized access.
Fencing and Bollards
Fencing prevent people from accessing your facility.
Bollards prevent vehicles from accessing your facility.
Fence
Structure that encloses an area using interconnected panels or posts.
Provides visual deterrent by defining a boundary of your property.
Establish physical barrier against unauthorized entry.
Delays buying your security personnel more time to react.
Protects against trespassing, theft, vandalism, and unauthorized facility access.
Bollard
Robust short vertical posts designed to manage or redirect vehicular traffic.
Besides physically preventing vehicles going into pedestrian areas, they also are a clear visual indicator of where vehicles are not permitted.
Keep vehicles away from buildings so people are out of range of IEDs.
A bollard with an ASTM rating of F2656-07 M30 P1 means it can stop a 15k pound vehicle traveling 30 mph and prevent it from moving more than 1 meter after impact.
Attacking with Brute Force
Brute force with respect to physical security is a direct and sometimes violent approach to bypassing security measures.
High-strength doors with deadbolt locks/metal frames/solid core
Electric/barbed fence
Tampering with security devices
Manipulating security devices.
Defense:
Redundancy in physical security measures
Confronting security personnel
Direct confrontation/attack with security personnel (e.g., weapons, distractions, etc.).
Defense:
Rigorous training in conflict resolution and self-defense training
Fast communication for backup and to signal potential security breach/attack
Barrier ramming with vehicle
Use a vehicle to ram physical security barriers.
Defense:
Bollards and other barriers
Surveillance System
Organized strategy to observe and report a given area.
Maintains the security and safety of a location.
Video Surveillance
Provides real-time visual feedback and ability to review after an incident.
Can also provide motion detection, night vision, facial recognition, remote access.
Entrances and exits should be covered.
Always record footage.
Wired/Wireless:
Wired: Physically cabled back to the monitoring station.
Wireless: Uses Wi-Fi to send signal back to central monitoring station. Easy to setup, but weaker to jam.
Indoor/Outdoor:
An outdoor camera needs to be able to withstand the elements.
Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ):
Can move camera or its angle to better detect issues during an intrusion.
Security Guards
Very flexible and adaptable.
Can reassure people they are safe.
Also a visual deterrent.
Lighting
Proper lighting is crucial for effective video and security guards surveillance.
Also can deter criminals, or also serve as an alert system (e.g., motion activated).
Sensors
Infrared
Detect changes in infrared radiation. Infrared is emitted by warm bodies. Good for low light.
Pressure
e.g., embedded in a floor/mat.
Microwave
Detects movement by emitting microwave pulses and measuring their reflection off moving objects.
Can cover large areas.
Often configured with very high sensitivity level.
Ultrasonic Sensors
Measures reflection of ultrasonic waves off moving objects.
Acoustic Interference
Jamming or playing loud music to disrupt a microphone.
Electromagnetic Interference
Jamming the signals systems rely on to monitor the environment (e.g., radio frequency jammers).
Physical Environment Attack
Exploiting environment around surveillance equipment to compromise its functionality (e.g., increasing temperature of a room with an infrared sensor, targeting main power supply, starting a fire, etc.).
Bypassing Surveillance Systems
Visual Obstructing: Blocking camera’s line of sight.
Blinding Sensors/Cameras: Overwhelming sensor or camera with sudden burst of light to render it ineffective for a limited period of time.
Physical Environment Attacks
Defending
Modern systems comes with defenses like:
Tamper alarms
Backup power supplies/UPS
Frequency hopping and encrypted traffic to prevent eavesdropping
Access Control Vestibule
Double-door system designed with two doors that ensures only one door can be opened at a given time.
Often combined with other measures (e.g., access badges).
Should be only big enough to let one person through at a time.
The human component cannot be understated (security guards are needed for visual deterrent, providing assistance, manually giving temporary access badges to visitors, and responding to breaches).
Piggybacking
Person with legitimate access intentionally allows an unauthorized person to enter with them.
e.g., letting a delivery driver in.
Tailgating
Unauthorized person follows someone with legitimate access through a secure space without their consent.
Piggybacking vs Tailgating
Piggybacking is a result of complicity or negligence, tailgating is done without knowledge or consent.
Door Locks
Pin & Tumbler
Pin and tumbler locks are easily defeated.
Electronic Locks
Electronic door locks are less-easily defeated; e.g.,
PIN
NFC/RFID/Bluetooth locks
Biometrics (e.g., facial, fingerprint)
False Acceptance Rate (FAR): The rate a system falsely authenticates a person.
False Rejection Rate (FRR): Rate system denies a user who should have been allowed access.
Equal Error Rate (ERR): Measure of effectiveness of a given biometrics system to achieve a balance. Also known as Crossover Error Rate. We want as small an ERR as possible.
Per-person PIN/biometrics/etc. can also be used for auditing.
Combining multiple automated methods can increase security.
Cipher Lock
Uses mechanical locking mechanism with push buttons that are numbered and require a person to enter a PIN.
Access Badge Cloning
Access Badges: Fast to use, can provide lots of detailed information like access level.
Technology: RFID, NFC, Magnetic Strips
Every time an access badge is used, the action is logged. Good for building an audit trail.
Cloning:
Use a handheld RFID or NFC reader to capture data from a victim’s card and store it for further processing.
Relevant authentication credentials are extracted.
Using specialized writing tools, extracted data is transferred to a blank RFID/NFC card.
Attacker can now use the cloned badge.
Cloning is a stealthy way to conduct a physical security attack.
Defense:
Implement advanced encryption in card-based authentication systems.