Distributed Security Site Family Hierarchy
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing physical security systems face challenges in managing and synchronizing data across multiple sites, particularly in scenarios where connectivity is disrupted, leading to inefficiencies in data sharing and system management.
Innovation Solution
A distributed security system is implemented, where sites are organized into a 'Site Family' structure, allowing for hierarchical user credentials and access privileges, with a parent site managing child sites and enabling data sharing through a protocol suite that includes discovery, gossip, node, membership, synchrony, consistency, and status protocols, ensuring data synchronization and redundancy.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a centralized security system is used to manage multiple sites, then system control and management are simplified, but the system becomes vulnerable to network failures and loses operational reliability at individual sites
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the security network into autonomous site nodes that can operate independently. Each site maintains local credentials and configuration data, allowing it to function autonomously during network failures. The segmentation creates distributed independence while maintaining overall system coherence through optional synchronization.
2Productivity
If manual configuration is used at each child site, then system security and local customization are improved, but setup time and operational efficiency decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The parent site performs preliminary configuration actions by automatically pushing credentials, user profiles, and system settings to child sites before they become operational. This advance preparation eliminates manual configuration steps at each child site, dramatically reducing setup time while maintaining security through controlled credential distribution.
3Reliability
If hierarchical credential management is implemented at the parent site, then control and security are improved, but system complexity and credential synchronization difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The parent site creates and distributes copies of credentials and configuration data to child sites. Each child site receives authenticated copies of necessary credentials through secure push mechanisms. This copying approach ensures data consistency across the hierarchy while simplifying synchronization, as each node maintains local copies rather than requiring continuous real-time communication.
Data Source
AI summary
A physical security system may define sites associated with cameras. Sites may be added as a child site off of a parent site to form a site family. Once set up, ranked user and group privileges on the parent site may be pushed to the child sites, and controlled by the parent site. The child sites may still define local users and groups so that the child site may operate if there is a loss of connectivity to the parent site.