How hardware from Axon safeguards critical infrastructure

“We will continue to prioritise healthcare and commercial facilities while driving implementation across all critical infrastructure sectors,” says Mike Shore, VP & GM, Enterprise, Axon.

What are the major threats facing critical infrastructure environments?

In a post-COVID world, many people have increasingly stopped following the rules and have developed a lack of trust in institutions.

This normalised behaviour has increased the threat of risk, violence and criminal activity globally.

I believe all critical infrastructure environments are facing these threats, but the two that are experiencing the greatest uptick of incidents and workplace violence are healthcare and public health and commercial facilities sectors.

Nurses and retail associates no longer feel safe when at work, leading to record high nurse churn and hiring and retention issues across both industries.

In fact, 76% of nurses reported physical or verbal abuse in 2022 and workplace violence and safety is the leading reason nurses leave their jobs.

Leading researchers, with the help of hospital network CEOs, estimate that nurse turnover has cost hospitals nearly $5m annually.

This rise of violence and need for increased security is similar in the commercial facilities sector, specifically in retail.

Organised retail crime has garnered global attention as it has become increasingly violent, with Fortune 500 security leaders acknowledging the issue and pledging more resources to keep store associates safe.

2022 was the most violent and deadly year in the history of US retail as 614 violent incidents occurred resulting in 654 deaths in retail locations.

Safety and security needs to be addressed quickly for these two sectors to remain profitable moving forward and security can be used as a competitive advantage when hiring/retaining employees.

Can you tell us more about the critical infrastructure sectors Axon provides solutions for?

Axon was founded in 1993 as Taser International by Rick Smith, the Founder and current CEO.

Two of his friends were murdered in a road rage incident and Rick dedicated his professional life to finding a less than lethal solution to protect life.

As the company evolved, the team introduced body-worn cameras and a digital evidence management system known as Evidence.com to provide more transparency and efficiency for law enforcement.

The company rebranded in 2018 to Axon and is now the leader in safety and security technology for law enforcement.

As Axon grew in popularity with law enforcement, we’ve been pulled into commercial markets to solve growing workplace violence, safety and security issues in the private sector.

Axon formed the Enterprise team in 2020 and our team has been focused primarily on healthcare and commercial facilities.

Our solutions are able to solve issues across all critical infrastructure sectors, but our primary focus is to first solve the near epidemic levels of workplace violence in the healthcare and commercial facilities sectors.

How valuable is video data not just from a security perspective, but an operational one?

Video data is irrefutable evidence, especially when it includes audio.

For years, CCTV footage has been used for safety and security measures, but there are blind spots to fixed cameras without audio capabilities.

We’ve seen a rapid shift to deploying body-worn cameras to cover the blind spots and capture audio where compliant.

The ability to piece together CCTV data with body-worn camera data provides a complete view of the situation with evidence that cannot be disputed.

That being said, the data is only useful if it can be stored, managed and shared with necessary parties (if applicable).

Evidence.com provides the necessary data storage and evidence management tools in a compliant way.

Body-worn camera footage uploads immediately upon docking the device and CCTV footage can be automatically integrated into our system.

This data can then be used to build training modules of best practices, to build cases after an incident occurs or to share directly with law enforcement to expedite adjudication that leads to a reduction of loss and violence.

How important is it to develop solutions that are custom to specific sectors?

Each sector has specific needs when evaluating technology and we believe it is imperative to provide a tailored user experience and purpose-built hardware rather than forcing one solution to be the answer across multiple use cases.

Axon is committed to providing these solutions based on customer feedback and direction.

We host multiple customer advisory board meetings for each sector we serve throughout the year to gain tangible insights for future development.

If a specific product or solution doesn’t currently exist in Axon’s ecosystem and customers request these, Axon will do whatever is possible to deliver.

What are Axon’s plans for 2023 and beyond?

Axon is investing heavily in building the products and workflows to better serve customers in critical infrastructure.

We launched our Axon Body 4, a body-worn camera with bi-directional communications, that we believe will be a valuable tool for multiple critical infrastructure sectors.

Being able to communicate with video data could alleviate the need for multiple resources on site and could cut operational costs significantly.

We will also be launching a body worn camera specifically designed for nurses and retail associates to force multiply security efforts and keep them safe.

As we receive in-field feedback from this device, we will begin developing more specialised body-worn camera options for a future release.

On the software side, we are developing tailored UI to simplify the evidence management and sharing capabilities for all private sectors.

We will continue to prioritise healthcare and commercial facilities while driving implementation across all critical infrastructure sectors.