Professional Security readers will have heard of Zinc that we mentioned early in 2021 when we featured the City Security Council (see below) and in May we reported the start of intelligence sharing in the City, thanks to Zinc software. But only after a call with Sophie Malone, Commercial Director at Zinc last month did I realise quite how widely used its SaaS (Software -as-a-Service) platform is, called SYNAPSE. First things first, Zinc prides itself on being an entrepreneurial software firm. Its platform is designed to solve the challenges of incident, crisis, and organisational resilience. It’s been tailored to meet the needs of GSOCs, building control rooms and security and safety teams. Embedded in the heart of an organisation, SYNAPSE delivers command, control, and intelligence through one common operating platform. They’ve got some leading corporate and Government bodies as clients, and Sophie did mention to me some of them and I was impressed, but regrettably I can’t say who they are. What I hadn’t appreciated is that Zinc operates on a global basis, and across sectors - retail, corporate, tall buildings, policing and government, besides security & FM (facilities management). As for the tech part, the platform is G Cloud 13 approved, has the international information security standard ISO 27001 and is UK Cyber Essentials accredited, and has all the necessary infosec (information security) required.

Sophie said: “Zinc’s mission is to help organisations control disruption smarter and deliver solutions to the management of incidents, critical communications, and compliance activities, as well as leverage the power of data insight in making effective and proactive decisions.”

The market

As for the global incident and emergency management market, it’s growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.7 per cent and is expected to be worth $171.8 billion by 2026 (according to MarketsandMarkets, 2021). This growth is being driven by demand for crisis, emergency, and incident management platforms like Zinc’s, as businesses seek safety and security against a background of natural and man-made threats, and regulation. As for the corporate and other sectors of security, we’re seeing digitalisation of control rooms and growth on mobile tech for responders, whether they are police or private security. And hence the need to have a solution that can pull systems, risks and incidents into one central platform. As we are all aware there is a cost associated to an incident should things go wrong. This platform enables teams to manage the incident rapidly, deploy automated and compliant actions whether they be tasks or notifications, ensuring the right people at the right time are communicated with.

The incident and emergency management services are flourishing, and organisations are creating innovative tools to help first responders, corporates and the public during any emergency. Zinc sees an extensive demand in this market and a need for end-to-end incident and crisis management solutions - there will be a huge demand for this over the next five years to manage natural calamities or terrorist attacks, to meet regulatory policies for public safety, and maintain preparedness in case of emergency.

High-growth

Zinc sees the regions of North America, Europe, and Asia offering the most market opportunities. Covid has had also had a significant impact on the economy in general, and on demand for crisis, emergency and incident management platforms in particular. Governments are likely to deploy systems that warn and manage threats and risks, that ultimately reduce the loss of human life and damage to property. And in the UK there are legal obligations under health and safety; and the proposed Protect Duty.

Client drivers

What are the drivers for clients? Sophie went through some of them. Clients seek to understand their vulnerabilities, to best protect their brand, people and assets. They may have legal obligations, to report certain incidents to the authorities. They may want to capture details of incidents for compliance and governance purposes. There’s the ‘duty of care’ to employees.

For security users, the tool may produce data that can justify resourcing models. It’s a digital and paperless solution, that reduces the man-hours and therefore the cost of data gathering and analysis. A user can integrate disparate systems into a single platform, creating a single view of performance and risk. To sum up, the platform can give you efficiency and optimisation.

Sophie said: “Organisations are using crisis management solutions to increasingly protect their brand and manage threats in terms of financial viability, employees health, and overall public safety. Our clients all place value in the need to demonstrate compliance and as a response to operational impacts.”

Offering

As a complete solution for Command, Control, Communication and Intelligence, SYNAPSE enables organisations to proactively identify vulnerabilities through integrated intelligence feeds, mapping, and data analysis, respond to operational impacts and incidents, from health and safety and security to the full management of a fire evacuations, as well streamlining mass communication.

Sophie said: “Our vision is to have SYNAPSE in all major control rooms and to create a connected ecosystem of clients that can inform our roadmap creating a formidable product that is aligned to the market’s trends and needs.”

Lots going on, as you can see. One last thing from Sophie about the company is their people are hand-picked from the sectors and the industries that they work across. This has led to a unique blend of techies, analysts, customer success, security, safety and risk professionals. This approach means that they can have consultative conversations around how ‘practically’ the software fits, today and in the future.

What can we expect from your company in the next 6 months. What are your plans? Roy asked. Zinc have secured funding from Maven Capital Partners to support their continued growth. This funding will accelerate our product development with includes the releases of the next generation SYNPASE product, namely: SYNAPSE ‘Analyst (Command, control, communication and analysis), SYNAPSE ‘Verify’ (proof of presence and patrol management), SYNAPSE ‘Reporter (mobile app); SYNAPSE ‘Marketplace’ (integration zone) and SYNAPSE ‘Consol’ (self-customisation).

Zinc is also heavily involved in the City Security Council (CSC), the group of City of London-based guarding companies. Zinc is providing support to the CSC around intelligence sharing and the newly launched incident and intelligence sharing platform that’s branded as CityINTEL. It’s used within the City of London Police control room to coordinate the sharing of intelligence across the various City stakeholder groups as well as the CSC members’ security teams in buildings.