Businesses across the globe face a complex set of threats — from vandalism, violence and natural disasters to more extreme cases, such as terrorism — all of which are unpredictable. The evolving risk environment of today’s increasingly global world increases the necessity for higher quality, more frequent data analysis to prevent and mitigate risks, make informed business decisions and ensure longevity in target markets.
Modern organizations look to technology systems to gather and analyze the most relevant information to gain insight on what is occurring within a facility at any given time. It is impossible for personnel to be in all places at all times and therefore, technology is a valuable force multiplier.
Challenging security applications, such as those found in critical infrastructure, also require advanced data and security analysis to secure perimeters. Integrated solutions are more beneficial than standalone systems and can help organizations monitor workplace operations, while ensuring health and safety compliance. Considerations for these projects can be daunting. For example, how should a natural gas company safeguard its drilling equipment in remote, unmanned locations? How can a university best provide a safe environment for an outdoor event?
Oftentimes, organizations have thousands of cameras spread across vast geographic landscapes, managed on multiple platforms to monitor operations and security efforts. Tools that quickly identify any perimeter intrusion incidents or breaches are paramount to greater overall security, but these solutions are only truly valuable if the critical data captured can be immediately assessed.
The focus should always be on identifying the right data to effectively mitigate threats, or if an incident has occurred, explaining what exactly happened. But finding the right pieces of information can be challenging, considering the amount of data collected from systems, sensors and devices at any given moment. Creating even more challenges is the simple fact that the majority of this data does not include pertinent activity.
Business leaders and security personnel must be able to quickly and easily identify the most relevant pieces of information. By integrating multiple technology platforms together, operators receive a correlated view of data through one interface to quickly identify security threats, and enable intelligent and informed security response. This integration is known as event-driven intelligence, and it is a valuable way to help users gain new insights and increase situational awareness.
How can businesses take a more informed approach to security and operational success? Video event management software (VEMS) is the next advancement of video management that allows stakeholders to gain new levels of insight over their operations. It delivers a streamlined method of collection and analysis of security and business data from a variety of sources. VEMS platforms shift the burden from hardware to software, linking facility device notifications into a single, easy-to-use interface that allows organizations to realize more efficient tactical responses to prioritized events.
Event intelligence enables users to organize and prioritize incidents that matter (and provides peace-of-mind in false-alarm scenarios). Applications ranging from education facilities and retail, to critical infrastructure sites and city surveillance adopt intelligent video surveillance as a way to gain insight and improve performance. With intelligent tools, such as built-in video analytics, critical details can be easily and quickly identified to facilitate rapid response, while allowing facilities to maximize manpower and reach a high level of safety.
Advanced Detection, Robust Intelligence
Video cameras traditionally collect video data, but it’s all in how this data is used that makes it so valuable to security managers. With the responsibility of securing facilities that are often times large, and even with smaller facilities where security teams are extremely busy, security managers need a solution that is able to focus on specific events that are in question to collect exact details that can be used to properly address particular incidents. The quicker an operator can find video evidence of the incident in question, the quicker it can be remedied and security restored. Moreover, security teams should identify a video solution that will meet these specific needs in a cost-effective manner while empowering users and offering easy, intuitive options. An easily scalable solution is critical to taking advantage of growth possibilities such as adding additional buildings or adding onto already established buildings and facilities.
Fast-tracked Interoperability
End-users seek to retain as much of their initial investment as possible while looking for ways to improve these systems as risk and business needs evolve. Integrators should look to bring an end-user’s diverse security systems into one integrated platform. Interoperability between systems, devices and various types of applications is important when making the whole system more intuitive. Solutions should offer the ability to accurately detect and manage any and all events captured by video cameras while simultaneously integrating other security-focused measures such as access control, intrusion alarm systems, fire detection, license plate recognition, etc. — the more details and pieces of information available about a certain event, the quicker the resolution.
When choosing a solution, make sure it has an open platform so that it will easily integrate with other third-party systems, devices and applications. Without question, integration and interoperability are crucial for scalability and “future-proofing” these installations, and it is imperative that integrators look into the lineage and innovation capacity of high-quality manufacturers.
Higher Levels of Situational Awareness
Opting for an event-driven, intelligent solution with video analytics and video management software allows users to recognize key trends in data. For example, VEMS users can track which alerts are triggered most and least frequently as well as identify gaps in security. This means the ability to proactively secure your application instead of reacting to a situation after the fact, because by then, it’s already too late. Security managers can define a specific set of events when alerts are necessary while at the same time, the video management software continuously analyzes incoming video data, providing an immediate alert upon detection of a relevant event.
Increased Return on Investment
Platforms that are able to remember typical patterns of behavior for a particular camera scene would be most beneficial to security managers. Once users adopt event-driven intelligence-based technology, they are able to retain their initial security investment, run proper VEMS along with all other third-party integration and reporting tools. They also can move away from investments in physical guards and move toward fewer operators manning more cameras through a single platform — delivering robust ROI.
Overall, the integration of various technology systems presents a unified outlook of an organization’s operations and allows stakeholders to be more prepared to address situations and events.
Driven by innovation and environmental sustainability, organizations in the critical infrastructure markets are dedicated to finding ways to lower operational risk, boost productivity and ensure workplace safety, while increasing perimeter safety. These organizations deploy centralized platforms that provide the opportunity to monitor multiple sites, manned and unmanned, and realize higher levels of security across its infrastructure. As big data analysis continues to grow, event-driven intelligence will continue to be paramount to ensuring businesses leverage the most critical data points to help them increase security, reduce fraud and reach sustained success.
