Storage costs money. With the growing attraction of megapixel cameras coupled with expanding security video uses ranging from forensics to marketing, the storage price tag can go up and up. Then, depending on the devices and their closeness to the IT operation, there is the cost of running and cooling the gear as well as the investment in backup and redundant storage systems.
It started with fairly simple video motion detection, a certain change in pixels raises an alert. Nowadays, algorithms – basically instances of logic to produce output from given video input – have expanded to cover people, behavior, demographics, traffic patterns, objects, vehicles and virtual perimeters. Video analytics has also evolved beyond security to include myriad business applications that can range from highway traffic management to retail merchandizing.
Brains or beauty? Both are bundled into many of today’s enterprise-sized security video designs, which intelligently apply technology, smartly migrate from analog to digital and wisely solve challenges both security and business related.
The surveillance industry has seen a massive amount of innovation in the past decade. New technologies, revised efficiency requirements and an information-centric workforce all continue to demand new approaches. However, in most cases, these innovations – ranging from IP networks and remote access to intelligent search technology – lag several years behind similar advancements in the IT sector.
“Do more with less.” That’s pretty much the message security managers and IT directors hear these days. On the one hand, security now ranks high on the agenda of most organizations; on the other, shrinking budgets pose a real challenge to deploying the security and surveillance systems they need. Fortunately, when you take a deeper and longer-term look at the economics of surveillance systems, a different picture can emerge — one that makes a lot more sense from a financial point of view.
Copper theft has become a major crime in the United States, thanks to record prices for the metal and hard economic times. As a New York Timesarticle put it, the current conditions have “spurred a resurgence in the past several months in the theft of common items that in better economic times might be overlooked — among them, catalytic converters from automobiles and copper wiring that is being stripped out of overhead power lines, tornado warning sirens, coal mines and foreclosed homes, where thieves sometimes tear down walls to get to copper pipes and wiring.”
When it comes to security video, memory lane started with a videocassette. Today, tried and true storage comes in myriad shapes and sizes. Choice, however, comes with challenges. As an enterprise security leader, what do you need to store today, how can storage scale up when needed, what’s the total cost of ownership, how can storage handle video streaming from higher resolution cameras and the needs of retrieval for forensics and business uses? Then there is the question of security of the stored video, especially when it comes to hosted storage, regulations, requirements and privacy issues.
There are a number of aspects of 'conventional wisdom' in the realm of physical security that just don't add up, that smack of having their origins in "the salesman made me do it," which under close scrutiny turn out to be absolutely backwards or even dangerous.
Multi-building campuses such as universities, research facilities, convention centers, hospitals and others face unique problems in implementing a total physical security solution.
Advances in IP video technology have expanded the use of video surveillance from the closed circuit television (CCTV) application, to applications that can improve virtually every aspect of a business – streamlining operations to increased protection and safety of facilities, inventory and staff.
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