Director of the KING ICT Sector for Mechanical Protection and Passive Networks, Matija Mandić, took part in an online panel of the Croatian private security industry “Private protection in the new normal conditions”, organised by the Croatian Protection Guild and the magazine Protection, with the support of the COESS.
The panel topics included issues such as how to ensure the survival of private security activities under the “new normal” conditions, how to retain personnel, how to adapt and operate under the new conditions, and the new areas for the private security industry.
“As a company, we reacted immediately following the proclamation of the pandemic, setting up a Crisis management team. We aligned at the national level and very quickly passed mandatory instructions and recommendations for conduct for our personnel to follow. The primary objective was to protect the health of our staff and their families, and to retain the continuity of operations, without jeopardizing our personnel, partners or customers,” said Matija when asked how KING ICT reacted to the pandemic.
“Before us, we still face the challenge on how to preserve our industry, with the aim of surviving this crisis as painlessly as possible in the context of people, operations and protecting jobs. We are aware of just how difficult it is to find good resources on the market, and that is why we are doing all we can to ensure long-term stability, preserve peace and our prospects. We have succeeded in protecting the health of our personnel and partners, we have retained our employees, kept salaries at the same level, secured the continuity of operations. These were our primary goals.”
Matija also explained just how the benefits of modern technology, such as artificial intelligence, have rose to the forefront in recent months. “Artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced to such an extent that following the emergence of the pandemic, with just minor adaptations to existing products, new technological solutions appeared on the market very quickly, and these contributed significantly to prevention and proactive monitoring of potential incident situations. Last year, we couldn’t have even imaged that cameras would be used so intensively for measuring body temperature or counting people in indoor spaces. Now we are using them for exactly this purpose, for the proactive detection of increased body temperature and the social distancing requirements. AI focuses on set alarms and appearances that it then treats with special attention. For that reason, it can handle repetitive and difficult jobs, and I see its wide application in the future in numerous industries, including transport, where technology can substantially unburden the system for monitoring misdemeanours and other offenses,” said Matija.
Regardless of the difficult economic situation at the global level, not everything is black. According to Matija, this crisis should be viewed as a sort of opportunity, as digital transformation will open up new business perspectives. “I would like to send a broad appeal to everyone, to properly capitalise on engineering knowledge, so that we can come out of this crisis stronger and better prepared for the EU market, which ultimately is our common goal,” he concluded.
Watch the entire of panel HERE.
