It’s Much More Than a Picture — What’s the Data Telling You?

By Bill Hobbs
VP Global Sales, 3xLOGIC

Trends, Topics and Technologies

Too often video surveillance systems end up being an “install it and forget it” proposition, never thought about again until an incident forces us to investigate what happened. Suppose the event was an overnight theft of outdoor equipment or a break-in right in the view of the camera — sounds like just what we’re looking for, right? Well, 13 burglaries occur every second in the U.S. on average; police solve barely 10% of them, and stolen property is rarely recovered.

Innovation in video security solutions are driving smarter and more connected edge devices such as cameras and sensors. As these devices evolve with higher powered CPUs, more memory, and full network connectivity, the data gathered at the edge becomes rich with metadata and actionable insights. Cameras have become sensors that fully participate in the security solution and are no longer relegated to just collecting pictures. These edge-deployed sensors are collecting and sharing information — rich metadata, including video, audio, object recognition, and other data such as license plate numbers, which then drive actions in the cloud.

An adequate surveillance system provides the picture, but good systems can warn you in advance of nefarious activity and help prevent the incident. An even better solution is interconnected with other security systems on your premises. It can warn you or a monitoring center in advance and remotely when an incident is about to occur or is in progress, and deliver that warning to any device, anywhere, anytime. A superior surveillance system does all that and employs behavioral analytics to enable the system to evaluate what’s in the camera’s field of view and make decisions on what actions are appropriate given a set of pre-programmed rules. That same five-star surveillance system will provide remote monitoring capabilities that activate video verification of alarms to help prevent false alarms and wasted police dispatches. These analytics can also be crucial in the forensic investigation of an incident, making searching for a specific object or person quicker and easier.

The Case for the Cloud

Cloud-based video recording solutions are the ideal environments for analyzing data across multiple cameras and locations. These cloud solutions not only enable quick and easy access to video, they provide insights at the location using metadata and video content. By centralizing this data in the cloud, insights as simple as motion detection can be correlated with historical data to determine if a particular location is at risk of breach or other misconduct.

The most significant advantage of cloud-based security solutions for business owners and security operators is the proactive notifications powered by newly actionable data. When metadata from edge devices is coupled with video from edge devices, a complete view of the enterprise becomes available at a level human perception alone cannot achieve.

This new technology doesn’t mean we eliminate the need for human intervention, rather it can reduce the frequency of false positives and help security personnel focus on what is truly important. The use of object and sound recognition allows machines to filter out nuisance events and escalate events, which require a human to investigate.

Wouldn’t you rather get an alarm when someone is loitering around your business, instead of reviewing footage of the break-in long after your property is damaged or stolen? An intelligent video system integrated with other security systems, such as intrusion and access control, gives you that crucial advance notice and offers a holistic view of your security that makes it possible to prevent crime, not merely try to solve it after the fact.