With 57,000 security endpoints monitored in the Security Operations Center (SOC), the Belgian Securitas operations team processes more than 3 million alarms a year. In Belgium, the company safeguards people, enterprises, private residences, and critical environments including airports, banks, government and military sites, hospitals, nuclear sites, police zones, ports and NATO HQ. They step in to resolve more than 68,000 situations in customer locations, some triggering police or firefighter response.

Ken Vanden Haesevelde, the Securitas IT Infrastructure Lead for Belgium and Luxembourg, describes the Securitas Belgium Security Operations Centers (SOCs) as the “beating heart of their security services.” Always-on system availability in the SOCs is essential to guaranteeing communications with guards on the ground.

In addition to the critical SOC communications, essential business applications enable Securitas guards, operators and staff to access their operational data, anytime and anywhere. Securitas employees, including those working from home, can access timecards and orders for training, uniforms, badging and equipment, HR, payroll and more.

Ken knew that the Securitas aging Tier 2 datacenters were experiencing increasing latency. He had sleepless nights worrying if or when infrastructure performance might compromise the safety of guards in the field.

Any outage would put client trust at risk and threaten the reputation of Securitas. And business expansion plans hinged on upgrading to modern infrastructure that would ensure operations performed with high efficiency at scale.

With datacenter performance challenges and the need to support future business, Ken saw an opportunity to address both with a single solution. Consulting with Wim Vancluysen, his Kyndryl partner, Ken envisioned a modernized infrastructure with:

• A modern, advanced infrastructure in a Tier 4 datacenter
• Scalability on demand, with plenty of room for business growth
• Fit-for-purpose systems designed for today and future-proofed for next-generation security technology

For years, Securitas relied on Kyndryl as a trusted managed services partner and saw the team as an extension of their own. So Kyndryl was a natural choice for collaborator on Securitas’ infrastructure and network transformation.

Specially trained security officers with innovative data technology such as rugged phones with sensors that alert the SOC if a person is down, and AI capabilities, help provide fastest-possible responses. It’s vital that communications are up 24/7 to comply with security and resilience industry standards.

Securitas SOC operators continually monitor customer sites with cameras and react when alarms go off, which may generate police or firefighter involvement. Incidents in the field need to be addressed within seconds.

While maintaining business continuity in production, Kyndryl experts would work to introduce complex network services, monitoring for each Securitas customer, software support and a managed service desk, back-up and disaster recovery, and infrastructure management services.

Then, they’d need to install new hardware and networking systems and test the connections from the new data centers to client sites and the SOC—all ahead of planning the existing system migration. Working with Kyndryl as a single partner for both business as usual and the new solution helped Ken mitigate risks in coordinating the parallel efforts.

As part of new business as usual operations, Kyndryl enforces security parameters for each system, and keeps backup and recovery documents up to date for security compliance, easing the burden on Securitas.

Kyndryl Bridge™ proactively recommends solutions for issues that have not yet occurred and automates issue resolution as permissions allow. Kyndryl Bridge AIOps extends ITSM efficiency by applying solutions to issues tracked over years in thousands of other customer engagements to the Securitas systems. The team expects up to 90% of issues to be automatically resolved as their ITSM evolves and critical applications and system resilience are boosted.

Fix once and resolve-for-all is achieved with IT Service Management (ITSM) software to track system and performance. As they resolve issues, the team creates and distributes Red Hat® Ansible® playbooks across all servers, for automated issues resolution, with 50 playbooks running in the Securitas infrastructure deployment. The team also uses RedHat Ansible for software updates and patches, important to applying compliant systems.

Ken cites Kyndryl’s ongoing communication as a significant reason for the success of the operations and ongoing reassurance the Securitas clients are secure. The Securitas and Kyndryl operations team includes global experts working from more than five nations and in multiple languages. The team is far-flung but keeps in close contact, talking nearly every day.

The modernized infrastructure solution already has proven its business value in being able to accommodate company growth. In July 2022, Securitas announced the acquisition of Stanley Security, the Electronic Security Solutions business from Stanley Black & Decker Inc., growing their worldwide client base to more than 500,000 clients, and expanding their technology capabilities.

The Securitas leadership team extended its Kyndryl partnership with an expansion and approximately 100 new virtual machines to help support the Stanley Security acquisition. The project was completed at the end of February 2024.