As PPM 2000's Co-CEO, Brian is specifically charged with creating, communicating, executing and sustaining PPM's strategic initiative and directs all of our strategic alliance, business and technology partner programs. Prior to joining PPM 2000 in November 2001, Brian was a police officer in Ontario and an investigator at one of Canada's largest private investigation firms. With extensive experience in the investigation industry, including both public and private sector, Brian is a leading authority, educator and speaker on security information management and the technology that drives it. Brian is Board Certified in Security Management as a CPP and an active member of ASIS International where he sits on the Executive Committee for Information Security Technology Council and is a member of the Toronto Chapter.

Brian McIlravey, CPP

Cloud from TechSec

by Brian McIlravey, CPP on February 7, 2012

I am at TechSec this week in sunny Delray Beach, Florida (actually, it’s pouring rain). The sessions here have been diverse, with a range of topics and great content.

I was invited to speak on a panel as part of, “Is your cloud provider secure?” Joining me was Chris Peckham (SVP & CTO Kratos), Morgan Hertal (VP & GM MACE CS) and Yong-Gon Chon (VP & CTO SecureInfo Corp)… all experts in the cloud services field.

My role was to address the group from the aspect of a vendor supplying a cloud service. What questions should you ask? How do you know the data is secure? Why would I use the cloud, etc.? There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about the cloud. What was eye-catching was the interest of running services in the cloud (services also being described as a product). PPM has been providing Perspective as a secure cloud base option for years. Although we were not able to use company and product names during the session, I was able to describe the benefits of using Perspective in the cloud… everything from improved customer satisfaction simply because updates are done quickly and easily, to the removal of IT barriers, to payment options which are more easily accessible than high output capital costs, to the security of the data. These points were substantiated by the rest of the panel in how they approach the cloud.

So why are we so afraid of the cloud? [click to continue…]

The Importance of Mobility

by Brian McIlravey, CPP on February 2, 2012

the importance of mobile incident data capture abilitiesYesterday I hosted the PPM webinar, ‘Empowering Officers and Investigators with Real-Time Incident Management—Introducing Mobility Options for In-the-Field Data Capture & Retrieval.’ Back when we started working on our mobile applications and had moved into the test and release phase, I thought “wow, this is really cool and easy to use,” but it wasn’t until I started putting the presentation together for this webinar that I realized just how important this function is to security and investigative personnel.

To start, I needed to come up with some basics for the webinar such as “what’s the benefit?” The answer to that question easily became intelligence and efficiency.

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Do You Trust or Put Value in Security Industry ‘Awards’?

by Brian McIlravey, CPP on December 15, 2011

I recently started a discussion on the ASIS-CPP LinkedIn group in respect to industry awards. Here is the exact question I posted, and further down, you’ll see some of the responses I received.

What is your take on industry ‘awards’?
How much stock do you put in them when looking at vendors?

So, what prompted me to ask? Well, at ASIS this year, I was confused by all of the ‘awards’ being marketed on booths. Don’t get me wrong… awards are important, and as referenced in the linked article below, “Awards should help us make better decisions and identify the best choices. But that’s why trust in the award granter is crucial. We need to be confident that awards are really based on merit.” However, are most awards really based on merit and fair competition, or are they ‘awarded’ through other means?

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Another Successful PPM International Trainers’ Summit

by Brian McIlravey, CPP on November 2, 2011

Over the course of last week, PPM’s network of trainers and consultants gathered at our Edmonton office for the 2011 PPM International Trainers’ Summit. The group consisted of our internal PPM training and consulting team, our contract trainers and our international contingent from the UK and Australia.

Our annual Trainers’ Summit is dedicated to updated product reviews and hands-on training to ensure that all of our trainers and consultants are fully up-to-speed on current product releases, and last week’s event included training for the much-anticipated Perspective 3.0 and the next generation of DispatchLog.

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Applying Peel’s Principle #9 to Your Incident Management Program

by Brian McIlravey, CPP on May 31, 2011

I wanted to share with you an article I wrote back in September of 2009 that speaks to Peel’s Principle #9. This article focuses on the importance of using metrics to monitor the effectiveness of your security program and in turn, demonstrate your security department’s ROI.

Applying Peel’s Principle #9

Anyone involved in security should be familiar with Peelian Principles—the philosophy that Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the British Police, developed in 1822 to define an ethical police force. There are nine principles in all, the most popular being “the police are the public and the public are the police.”

While Peel’s principles specifically address the police force, many of them can just as easily be applied to private security; in particular, principle #9 is directly relevant to your incident management program.

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