Covert Video Surveillance Keeps a Watchful Eye Wherever It's Needed

By Mark de L. Thompson

Video surveillance has become an accepted and welcomed part of business operations across all industries. The advent of IP-based surveillance, enabling remote monitoring and making the systems scalable, along with many other benefits, has only increased the ROI and functionality of these systems while making them more accessible to a wider variety of businesses.

Still, there are many environments in which security executives would not want anyone to be aware that they are under surveillance. These are applications for which covert video would be indicated. It could be a retail environment where there has been substantial shrinkage and the manager or owner needs to determine if the problem is being caused predominantly by shoppers or employees. It could be a warehouse where productivity is down and management wants to know what workers are spending their time doing. Or an office where there have been HR issues and evidence is needed to support a case.

Outside the business arena, healthcare and mental health facilities can use covert video as an investigative tool to document behavior, while law enforcement would have a wide range of applications for the technology.In the U.K, one approach to combat child abuse has been the employment of hospital-based covert video surveillance to monitor parents suspected of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a psychiatric disorder in which parents fake or cause their child's disease, illness or psychological trauma in order to draw attention or sympathy to themselves. Parents can also use the technology to observe caregivers or simply to watch over their home when they are away.

All these are examples of the many applications for covert video. With covert surveillance, the key objective is to provide high quality images from cameras that are essentially undetectable. The vehicle for the camera has to fit seamlessly into its environment so that it appears to be a completely ordinary and utilitarian object, such as an exit sign, a clock, a wall plaque or a smoke detector. When making the selection, the user needs to be sure it will look natural and also that it will function as a real product would. Another consideration is whether the camera will be wired or wireless; again this will depend on the location of the application. One more option for the user is not to mount the camera on a wall or ceiling, but to instead wear it; covert cameras can be placed into buttons, caps, ties and other wearable items. With so many different kinds of environments in which covert video might be used, it is imperative that a manufacturer offer a large range of options for users.

Today's covert cameras are motion-activated, which helps save on battery life. Integrating covert video surveillance on an IP platform provides a number of advantages; recording and archiving can be managed via NVR, enabling remote monitoring in real-time, and live or archived video can be accessed and viewed from any location with a broadband internet connection. As technology has improved, the cameras have gotten smaller, while image quality has continued to improve. With the range of solutions offered today, there is virtually no application, environment or situation where it is not possible to keep careful eyes on events as they unroll.

About the Author:
Mark de L. Thompson is president and CEO of Supercircuits, a provider of video security (and 7 year holder of the Guinness Book of Records for World's Smallest Video Camera). Prior to joining SC, Mark was a vice president at Dell Inc, in a variety of marketing and general management roles.  He was also an executive at Ameritech and a senior consultant at the Boston Consulting Group.

Visit his Web site at www.supercircuits.com

ATTENTION SECURITY MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBERS! 

Have you renewed your FREE subscription to Security lately? If you haven't renewed since May, it's time! Click here to bring your subscription up-to-date. 

If you'd like to start a subscription to our monthly publication, please click here.

TECHNOLOGIES: