Protection from the drone invasion

These scenarios are all too real. Late last year, drones captured key scenes during the filming of Season 6 of Game of Thrones, leading the company to issue a strict ban on spy craft flying above the principal filming location in Northern Ireland. And in September, a drone captured images of Apple's new campus in Cupertino.

Even the most sophisticated gate or perimeter security has natural vulnerabilities to serious and concerted attacks, one being to knock-out the imaging control and intrusion detection network, another to send in drones able to overfly barriers undetected.

Auto manufacturers are putting in place drone detection technologies, which allow them to detect the presence of a drone nearby their test tracks (a major concern when they are testing prototype cars). Once detected, the manufacturers adopt evasive manoeuvres, such as setting off smoke and pulling cars into covered tents, in order to avoid drones capturing photo and videos of the new cars.

Accordingly, software company Dedrone of Kassel, Germany, and Charleston, West Virginia, are able to protect automotive test tracks, along with government buildings, embassies, top security construction sites, film sets, prisons and industrial premises against terrorist drone activity, spying and smuggling via its civilian drone early warning and detection system.

The company’s DroneTracker detects UAVs by means of a multi-sensor system running intelligent software. Dedrone technology enables facilities to react quickly and often to locate and neutralise the pilot. The drone detection system not only provides real time video of an incident, but records the threat for video evidence.

The size, speed and varying shape of drones make identification extremely difficult for a single monitoring method. Therefore, DroneTracker utilises an array of sensors to detect drones in real time. DroneTracker is equipped with a system of interacting sensors. Based on multiple parameters such as noise, shape and movement patterns, it is able to reliably detect all types of drones. The built-in camera saves images and videos in HD quality, providing crucial evidence of the threat intrusion.

New networking features added to the DroneTracker system allows better integration with existing security monitoring systems. In addition to custom TCP/IP messages, organisations can now communicate and send alert notifications via SNMP and SNMP Traps. This provides more flexibility for integration of the DroneTracker with existing security systems.

According to Jörg Lamprecht, Managing Director of Dedrone: “The issue of spying and utilising drones to secretly capture valuable content from entertainment companies, automobile testing facilities or even corporations is becoming a considerable problem. Moreover, there are methods by which drones can return autonomously to where they came from, leaving no trace of their presence. Organisations with any kind of intellectual property to protect should consider adopting drone detection technologies.”