Rash of terrorist attacks: A boon to security business
Company executives at ADT Inc., the nation’s largest security company, held a special meeting via video conference after the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta.
The subject was the predictable, almost clockwork-like, upturn in security-related business such tragedies produce. ADT’s manager for the Central Texas region, Jeff Bean, says he has seen the pattern repeated over and over with the wave of terrorist attacks in recent years.
The video conference was scheduled to prepare for the “ripple effects” in every area of the company’s home and commercial security business.
“[The increase] ranges from the smallest corner store or home to the largest corporations,” Bean says. “It’s not localized or industry-specific. And it doesn’t go away for awhile.”
Security firms like ADT, which employs 62 in Austin, are among the few beneficiaries of high-profile tragedies like the Olympic explosion and the recent crash of TWA flight 800 off the Long Island coast. An onslaught of terrorism-related tragedies has made Americans more security-conscious than ever.
Many members of Austin’s diverse community of 100 or so security-related companies will profit from this state of alert.
For one, Systems & Processes Engineering Corp. of Austin recently won a $400,000 federal grant to develop a low-frequency, magnetic imaging system for detecting concealed weapons. The firm is now pushing its federal sponsors for more than $1 million to launch the project into its second phase.
“It’s sad but true,” says Randolph Noster, the president and founder of SPEC. “The timing is very good for technologies like this right now.”
SPEC is a relative newcomer to the security technology market. Normally, the company focuses on specialized systems and microchip-related research.
The firm was lured to the security area by grant money made available by the National Institute of Justice, the federal agency that researches cutting-edge law enforcement technology.
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