Houston, Texas: Kastle Systems, the leading provider of outsourced security to commercial office buildings, announces its unique Fifteen Point approach to business continuity that has not only kept thousands of security systems online during true emergencies, including its 183 Houston-based buildings during Hurricane Ike, but also handles over 250,000 events per month, preventing disasters, enhancing security and enabling buildings to be operationally efficient.
Although natural disasters like Ike get the most attention, they, in fact, comprise only about 5% of damaging system failures. The leading causes are not natural disasters, but are operation and hardware errors, comprising 80% of downtime. Examples include hardware and software failure, human error, power outages and communications failures. Kastle's Fifteen Point approach comprehensively addresses all types of system failures and disasters.
As the leading provider of outsourced security, Kastle's plan is a holistic approach. It considers not only continuity but also prevention. It provides extensive coverage to protect its systems, including its own Operations Centers and its clients' onsite security hardware and software. In addition to this, it protects its clients' systems through the use of sensor monitoring of its clients' environments. This helps prevent the more common and costly disasters caused by changes in the environment, such as overheating in the IT room, equipment tamper or even water levels rising.
A central element of Kastle's approach includes the deployment of four fully-staffed redundant Operations Centers in Houston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and Sydney, Australia. This gives Kastle the ability to switch monitoring from one center to the other in the event that it is required. Each center is supplied with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), back up air conditioning, and two back-up generators, all of which are also monitored for failure.
Kastle's databases are all redundant. Additionally, with its current technology, Kastle employs a distributed processing software architecture so if communications should go down between Kastle and a client, the client's system will continue to operate as usual during the down time. Additionally, Kastle can provide two onsite event processors, so if one should go down, the other will take over
On the client side, Kastle provides a process of notification of critical environmental or system changes through the utilization of sensor monitoring. Examples include notifications of burglar alarms, equipment tamper, HVAC system indicators, power outages and water detection.
"Kastle monitors the HVAC systems in our data centers. If any of those systems go down, we are notified (by Kastle). No HVAC means the room is going to get hot, which means the servers are going to shut down. Early warning is invaluable to us. If our data center crashes because of heat, that would be a terrible thing. Kastle has helped us on several occasions to prevent such a disaster in our data centers." said Sharon O'Meara, Chief Administrative Officer of Dickstein Shapiro, LLP.
Kastle also offers an emergency response system allowing clients to secure and lock their buildings with the wave of a card. Clients can run "roll call" reports to determine last known location of employees in the event of a disaster
"Kastle brings a comprehensive approach to business continuity. In times when security is more important than ever, Kastle is committed not only to keeping our clients' systems operating properly when a disaster has occurred, but even more importantly, in helping them prevent disasters from ever occurring. Even the smallest gap in the security process means simply that you are not secure." said Ramona Brady, Vice President of Kastle Systems.
Kastle Systems has been leading the industry for more than 35 years with new technologies and advanced security solutions. Kastle sets the standard for the design, installation, operation, and management of building and office security systems. Their products and services are offered on the GSA Supply Schedule.
Kastle is the only company that operates and manages security systems for its clients offsite, around-the-clock. Currently, Kastle successfully protects more than 1,800 properties with over 37,000 tenant spaces, for a total of 316 million square feet of office space nationwide and internationally.
Kastle's innovative outsourced security services significantly reduce costs and improve the critically important, 24/7 performance of security systems for building owners, developers, and tenants.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Kastle Systems has offices in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Sydney, Australia. To learn more about Kastle's security solutions, visit the Kastle website.