SIA New Member Profile: Live Earth, LLC

Live Earth logo

New Security Industry Association (SIA) member Live Earth, LLC, is a data analytics and visualization platform with automation capabilities that operates at cloud scale to enable faster decision making and reduce operational risk. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas.  

SIA spoke with Craig Johnston, vice president of sales and business development at Live Earth, about the company, the security industry and working with SIA.

Tell us the story of your company.

CJ: Live Earth was originally developed more than a decade ago for U.S. special operations forces under classified operations to help visualize their real-time data feeds on a single interactive map. Ready to provide advanced situational awareness, Live Earth is battle tested and meets the evolving demands of the commercial space.

Kelly Grooms
Kelly Grooms, chief operating officer and co-founder, Live Earth

“We got started with the motto, ‘serve those that serve us.’ In this, we were focused on military, special forces, law enforcement, and others. Our goal was to make their lives as easy as possible since they put their lives on the line for us.

In the beginning we saw a big problem. It was too hard for on the ground decision makers to get a clear picture of what was happening on the battlefield. The general, captain or major had to talk to a team of intel analysts, each of whom had their own stove-piped system of data, each had a map with icons on it, but each was slow, clunky, and didn’t talk to any other systems. We thought that was too slow and that a system could be created that would provide all the data, at once, tied together by location and time. We then thought, we could make it fast, easy to use, and beautiful. So, we built a prototype that did just that. The rest is history.”

Kelly Grooms, chief operating officer and co-founder, Live Earth
Live Earth platform

What solutions/services does your business offer in the security industry? And what makes your offerings/company unique?

CJ: Live Earth is a real-time data visualization platform that has the capability to aggregate and analyze more than 600 million data points per hour and present them in concert of one another on a live, interactive map. This level of visibility provides users with an unparalleled ability to detect, understand and respond to anomalies from a variety of disparate data sources. Other systems fail to provide real-time situational awareness. Live Earth provides organizations with the ability to integrate virtually any data source seamlessly without the need for engineering resources.

Coronavirus map

What’s something we might not know about your company – or something new you’re doing in security?

CJ: Organizations are faced with growing concerns of employee safety related to a pandemic. Life as we knew it abruptly shifted into remote working environments, which created a variety of security challenges across IT and HR departments, as well as operations departments. Organizations realized quickly that they needed the ability to adjust their operations based on real-time pandemic data collected, published and ordered.

Live Earth allows organizations to pull in their internal data sources, like employee or facility locations, and then correlate that data with all the other available data sources to keep their employees and facilities safe. With the ability to set up custom alerts, leaders can be notified in real time, when thresholds or geographies indicate action is necessary. They can quickly turn on and off data layers to better understand the situation. Leaders benefit from a common operational picture that aggregates all the disparate data sources, leading to faster decisions to keep their employees and facilities safe.

Calgary

What does SIA offer that is most important to you/your company? And what do you most hope to get out of your membership with SIA?

CJ: SIA offers extraordinary networking capabilities with the right people. The members are passionate about the industry and want to provide solutions to organizations that provide a holistic approach to advanced technology to keep people, places and things safe.

As a software-agnostic data platform, we are looking forward to working with and integrating a wide variety of partners to provide a central location for organizations to manage all their disparate data sources, gaining a deeper insight to the data available today and in the future.

command center

What is your company’s vision, and what are your goals for the security industry?

CJ: To visualize the world’s information, provide instant insight and turn raw data into useful knowledge.

Live Earth is the world’s fastest data visualization platform. Our goal is to bring a trusted, software-agnostic platform to the security industry as the leading common operational picture to consolidate an organization’s disparate data sources so they can make faster decisions and keep their employees and facilities safe. 

What do you think are the biggest opportunities in the security industry right now?

CJ: Are companies ready for the new normal? How are they getting in front of the need to track employees and have an increased awareness on both local and international regions for risk mitigation? How will chief security officers (CSOs) train and staff – or better yet, deploy new technologies to better detect, understand and respond to anomalies from so many data sources. Actionable intelligence with well-thought-out workflows are needed. We are ready to help!  But are the CSOs of today funded and ready to prepare? We look forward to supporting the security industry as we emerge stronger. 

Vancouver rally

What are your predictions for the security industry in the short and long term?

CJ: As camera technologies and Internet of Things sensors get deployed in more and more systems, giving access to larger amounts of data and increased situational and environmental awareness, the industry will need to evolve and take advantage of edge technologies and the ability to see and control all these devices from one common, automated system. Human eyes will no longer be able to keep up with all the available data. Analytics are needed to help us focus on what matters.

What are the biggest challenges facing your company and/or others in the security industry?

CJ: The industry needs to focus on open-platform solutions that allow companies to make the best fiscal and operational decisions to deploy what fits best for any given use case and workflow. The consolidation of systems into “one-stop” companies hampers the ability to respond to changes.

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association.