News

The 54-year-old is CEO of Bosch Security Systems, which is based in Ottobrunn, Bavaria. The 60 member companies of the Security Systems part of the ZVEI have elected two Vice Chairmen to the executive board: Uwe Bartmann, Managing Director for Germany at Siemens Building Technologies, Frankfurt am Main, and Dirk Dingfelder, President of D+H Mechatronic AG, Ammersbek (Schleswig-Holstein).

The previous Chair of this area, Angelika Staimer (Siemens Building Technologies), will continue to head up operations as Chair of the newly established steering committee. Her deputy will be Michael von Foerster (Bosch Security Systems).

After he was appointed to his new role, van Iperen stated his key activities to be standardization, political relations, public affairs and intensification of the cooperation between the state, the EU and industry in the development and application of new technologies. He stressed the importance of promoting European standardization and implementing the results as norms at a national level. "Over the coming months, we will be pumping new energy into the promotion of the "Single Pan-European Quality Mark", a topic that is being pursued by the European organization Euralarm. The vision of a one-stop testing and One-stop certification program that is accepted everywhere requires free and standardized trade for intrusion and fire detection technology in Europe." The aim is to motivate Specifiers and System integrators to make the most of the range of qualifications available from the ZVEI security academy.  
 
Van Iperen also wants to reinforce the political connection: "The German security industry develops cutting-edge technology that is respected around the world. We need to foster closer cooperation between the industry and the state to accelerate the time it takes to launch these new technologies into the public and private sectors." The introduction of a nationwide obligation to install smoke detectors in Germany and the increased use of both biometric recognition systems and video surveillance technology with automated image evaluation are just a few of the ideas that could be considered in this area.

But he also wants to make companies themselves more alert to security vulnerabilities: businesses need to realize that Internet espionage is actually the exception in many cases. "Most secrets are still stolen in conventional ways, because property is not sufficiently protected." The current Constitution Protection Report supports this observation.
 
Finally, van Iperen is hoping to improve the association's commitment to new technologies, and he is calling for stronger networking among security industry members. Within the European Union's 7th Framework Program for research, many companies did not reach the optimum level for funding. Overall, the EU is supporting ten industries with a total of EUR 50 billion, with a view to enhancing the technological standing of European companies in relation to others around the world. One focus is security technology.