Violence in American schools over the past two decades has resulted in the real need for an increase in security technology in the school setting. Federal government initiatives like Safe Schools, Healthy Students have been created to bring together school officials, law enforcement, and surrounding community leaders.

Along with federal grants, these initiatives have helped generate a national awareness for the increase of school security technologies to help keep our schools safe. Be sure to read Cheryl Shea’s blog post, “Technology for Safer Schools”, on the Tyco Security Products Blog to see what types of technologies are being deployed in the school setting and how manufacturers like Tyco Security Products are working to meet the specific requirements and limited budgets of this industry.

What are your areas of concern regarding school safety, let us know by leaving a comment.

For those of us who operate in a 24/7 physical security technology world, the migration from analog to IP based systems may seem like a done deal. After all, the security industry publications are busy touting the next big developments such as surveillance in the cloud and HD vs. 3D and have presented case studies on analog to IP conversion for the past decade. Doesn’t that signal that everyone has gone down this road already and the process is complete?

Truth be told, the reality is far different. There are still plenty of companies and institutions with analog systems that are just embarking on the migration journey. According to IMS Research, a U.K.-based market research firm, it will likely be 2013 to 2014 before sales of IP and network-based equipment surpasses the sales of analog products. Granted, analog sales are flattening out and IP video product sales for cameras, NVRs, encoders and video management systems are growing at about 30 percent a year, based on IMS’ data, but there remain buyers in both categories and analog hasn’t disappeared from the radar as quickly as may have been predicted.

In this ongoing migration to IP network video, many are beginning to weigh the benefits of replacing or supplementing their existing analog-based products. They are asking themselves a host of questions: Will switching to IP improve the resolution and quality of my video? Will IP products perform better in both day and night conditions? Will I be able to do more with the video I am capturing?

Likewise, they are exploring not only the possible benefits of a conversion, but also the challenges presented by taking a new path: How do we get in sync with the IT department on how this will work? What training will be required for the security staff on this new system? Do I need to start from scratch, or can I integrate some IP based products with what I already have in place?

These and other questions are addressed in the Webinar: Uniting Analog CCTV and IP Video Security Systems. If you’re in the process of evaluating this migration and would like to learn more about what steps to take, please watch the recorded webinar.

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Have you thought about, started, or completed the migration? If so, leave us a comment below with your biggest concerns?

A few weeks ago the National Retail Federation (NRF) held its 101^st Annual Convention & Expo in New York City, bringing together some of the biggest names in retail, such as Target, Macy’s and Walmart, to network, participate in educational programs and view the latest retail technologies.

Known as “Retail’s Big Show,” an important element of this annual expo is retail security, as the industry continuously grapples with loss prevention issues on a daily basis. Not only do loss prevention professionals need to ensure that merchandise remains secure after hours, they also have to contend with employee theft, shoplifting by individuals, and organized retail crime rings.

What tools will loss prevention professionals deploy to tackle these many problems? IP video is expected to play a large role in helping to solve the retail shrink problem, as more retailers look to harness the full benefits that technology has to offer.

The Global Retail Theft Barometer reports that total global shrink in 2011 costs retailers $119 billion a year which includes Organized Retail Crime (ORC). According to the National Retail Federation’s Organized Retail Crime (ORC) Survey 2011, nearly six in 10 senior loss prevention executives say senior management understands the severity of the organized crime problem. Because of these staggering statistics, many retailers reported they are investing in additional technology to mitigate losses from ORC.

IP video can help retailers reduce shrink by identifying shoplifting activities quickly. Built-in intelligence helps to reduce the number of uneventful recordings and send alarms when suspicious behaviors occur. A store manager can easily search thousands of hours of video to find a specific video clip quickly for forensic evidence after an incident has occurred.

The intelligent capabilities of IP video enable store managers responsible for many stores to remotely monitor each store for suspicious behavior from any location with a network connection. Both live and recorded video can be viewed at any time thus reducing the need for dedicated loss prevention specialists to monitor shoppers at each store. Also, remotely monitoring store activity using high-definition IP cameras gives a clearer picture of activity across all stores. Gone are the days of dealing with grainy footage to capture a crime in progress or to identify the perpetrator of the crime after the fact. The clarity of an overall scene can help determine whether a shoplifter acted alone or as part of organized crime ring that moves from store to store.

In fact, the Illustra IP cameras enable rapid evaluation and recognition of ORC members through their interoperability with Sensormatic EAS pedestals. Taking an alarm from the pedestal, an Illustra camera can instantly send an image or a clip anywhere via email. Clear face shots of potential perpetrators can be evaluated and redistributed to other locations as ORC teams move from store to store. 

The Illustra 600 HD IP cameras extend the reach of IP cameras by intelligently targeting high-definition resolution directly at faces in the scene. A properly situated Illustra 600 camera can detect faces dynamically and increase the bit-rate or clarity around those faces in real-time. That means a full HD camera can operate at a network-friendly level, but deliver crystal clear face shots in the blink of an eye.

Learn more about how IP video can help retailers solve their unique security requirements by watching an interview featuring Karen Olsen from Tyco Security Products taken during the NRF show.

How is IP video helping you curb retail shrink and improve store operations? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Even though the flood waters in Thailand have mostly receded, the flooding caused by record monsoon rains this year has had a significant impact on the storage industry. Almost one-third of the world’s hard drive manufacturers facilities were under water this fall and some areas remain flooded. As a result, storage device manufacturers have been challenged with keeping up with demand, driving up the cost for storage by as much as 50 percent.

Low supply and higher prices present several challenges for the security industry, which requires enterprise-class hard drives that are designed for continuous, 24/7 operation. Not all hard drives are created equal. While consumer grade hard drives can often be less expensive, security industry recording requirements need to be more reliable and to continuously read and write multiple video streams simultaneously. As a result, security Hard Disk Drives should never be low-cost consumer drives such as those used in a desktop or laptop computer, as these components were not intended to process information 24 hours a day.

Systems integrators need to be vigilant when it comes to buying hard drives for their customer’s digital video storage needs. Here are a few simple tips to follow:

• It’s important to know where your products are coming from and to work with a reputable supplier in the industry that will maintain product integrity. The cheapest storage device is not always the best.
• Since most integrators don’t have the financial backing to maintain large inventories of hard drives, be sure to maintain a dialogue with your vendor about your storage needs for future projects. Provide your solution provider with a list of upcoming projects so you can get your order in early, avoid wait times and perhaps save some money.

It will take several months before the hard drive storage industry returns to normal and inventory levels to recover. In the meantime, it’s important for Tyco Security Products customers to know that we are working closely with our hard drive storage device suppliers to maintain inventory levels of our various storage solutions and to ensure that we continue to deliver quality products to the marketplace. 

Lets us know how you have been affected by the hard drive shortage by leaving a comment below.

With each stage of development in high-definition IP cameras, as the megapixels increase, there is a greater emphasis on tailoring solutions to avoid major impact on network bandwidth and storage. As camera features are improved and enhanced, so is the need for greater bandwidth and storage. While H.264 compression enabled widespread use of megapixel resolution, bandwidth and storage are still a major concern for many customers.

More industries and organizations have an increased need for greater details and features when purchasing high-definition cameras. From a cost standpoint, storage has an impact on customer purchasing. While storage may seem inexpensive relative to other technology, when a customer adds up the amount of storage needed for a full megapixel deployment, it is not necessarily cost-effective. This results in the purchase of fewer cameras. Fewer cameras may result in security incidents being missed, which can directly impact a business.

Face detection is a new technology that significantly combats bandwidth and storage costs. A camera’s ability to detect a face in a scene and send an alarm without increasing bandwidth and storage is key. Superior high-definition cameras can detect a face and increase the bit rate around it, while still being able to see the surrounding areas in the scene. Think of this as an intelligent region of interest.

Customers concerned about bandwidth are generally on “shared networks.” Shared networks are those where traffic from the security devices coexist with traffic from other business functions, as opposed to dedicated networks where only security traffic travels. This situation can occur anywhere; however, this issue is largely seen in the healthcare and education markets.

In applications where capturing quality facial imagery is important, choosing the right camera can make a difference. With some surveillance cameras, you have no choice but to set the resolution and quality high enough to capture the faces with ample clarity. But when those settings are used all the time, whether there is a face in the scene or not, this wastes bandwidth and storage on video that is not important. In other cameras, you might have to crop the image in order to save bandwidth and storage, but this often loses important scene information. The best option is an intelligent surveillance camera which can be set at a lower overall bit rate but one that will boost the quality around faces detected in the scene. This captures high quality face images, but reduces overall bandwidth and storage consumption by not wasting it on less interesting parts of the scene. But those parts of the scene are still available so that important information is not lost.

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What other ways are you offsetting the need for more storage within your IP security system? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
 

Recently we had the pleasure of announcing our exciting plans to grow our intrusion technology portfolio. With our signing of an agreement to acquire Visonic Ltd a few weeks ago we expect to be officially welcoming them into the Tyco Security Products fold very soon. We’re thrilled with our plans to acquire this unique and innovative company that has deep roots in the security industry and strong strategic sales channels. It represents a key opportunity for us to increase our market presence in the intrusion space in key global markets.

While this is a major move for our intrusion portfolio, it’s only one area of growth within Tyco Security Products. Acquiring new technologies has historically been part of our strategy, but our investments into R&D and engineering are also a significant driver behind the inventive solutions we strive to continually offer the market. The push for continued product development and for integrations between our different technologies is a hallmark of our individual brands and of Tyco Security Products as a whole.

To insure our roadmap development and integration plans are supported and evolve to meet the changing needs of our global customers we continue to make investments into the resources required – like engineering and product management. In fact, in 2010 we added about 200 new employees worldwide, with the greater majority of these new resources being engineers. The hard work of our combined product teams and other valued employee resources has enabled Tyco Security Products to retool each of our major product offerings over the past two years to ensure that we maintain a competitive edge and continue to offer relevant solutions to today’s security issues.

Last month at ASIS we had the opportunity to show the industry some of the fruits of this talent pool. Several recent new innovations have been added to our product portfolio, including some that made their debut at the show. Our new IMPASSA wireless intrusion system offers a unique feature set including two-way wireless functionality, an integrated communicator for secure alarm communications and a distributed wireless approach for easier installation and setup.

On the video side, we introduced a new version of our victor unified video client and VideoEdge NVR, furthering our strategy to simplify video management for large sites like airports, hospitals and universities. This means easier prioritizing and sharing of video within the facility’s operations center for improved response time. In addition, our easy-to-install Illustra IP video camera family continues to grow, with the addition of the Illustra 600 minidome camera.

Finally, our access control offerings – Software House’s C•CURE 9000 and Kantech’s hattrix security service platforms – continue to break new ground in their respective segments of access control and expanding new possibilities for large and small organizations alike.

Armed with these recent advancements and the power within our individual brand legacies, I look forward to the accomplishments we will achieve in the next six months as we gear up for ISC West.

Let us know which products you are using to help your organization or customers meet their security needs by leaving us a comment below.

Training is a significant and generally hidden cost. The task of training your staff on the operation of a video management system (VMS) can sometimes be difficult enough. So why go through this training twice?

Many VMS require one system to handle analog video feeds from DVRs and another to control and manage IP video. As the bulk of video systems today are a combination of analog and IP infrastructures, that means most security departments spend precious seconds and minutes toggling back and forth between open windows on their computer monitor (sometimes even different computers altogether) to track an intruder’s movements from analog camera to IP camera or to investigate and clear multiple alarms during the busy morning and evening rushes in and out of the office building.

A growing number of security directors are saying “No,” to maintaining these separate systems, along with their individual needs for maintenance, updates, training, and upgrades. For Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, deploying two separate systems to handle the institute’s significant infrastructure of analog cameras along with a multitude of new IP cameras was not an option Security Manager Ralph Nerette was willing to consider.

As part of a three-year construction project to build the institute’s new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care and the center’s 180 new IP cameras, Nerette and his security team designed and outfitted a new security operations center, which handles the institute’s two million square feet of clinical, research, and administrative space in the greater Boston area. At the heart of the new space is Nerette’s solution — the victor video management system, which allows security officers to unify security management functions and have a set of tools to view, search and export video from both Intellex DVRs and VideoEdge NVRs. 

With this approach, Dana-Farber has managed to streamline its video management, putting the institute back into the technology driver’s seat. You can read more about how Dana-Farber was able to take control of its security management in this news story from Security Director News.

Has your organization struggled with multiple systems? Let us know your concerns by leaving us a comment.

Being the next YouTube sensation can have its perks: instant fame and fortune, endless media attention, and maybe a recording contract or two. Unless you’re trying to be the next Justin Bieber (and presumably most security directors are not), having video of your organization viewed on millions of computer screens and mobile devices around the world, is the last thing a head of security wants to see. This is particularly true when the clip originated from your video system.

The exploding popularity of sharing video on sites like YouTube and a host of others, makes it far more likely that embarrassing or potentially harmful video from your parking lot, emergency room, office lobby or conference room could end up as the viral video of the week. Remember the YouTube video of the security footage showing a woman falling into a mall fountain because she was walking and texting? This was made much worse because of the security officers laughing in the background as they replayed the CCTV footage of her fall from multiple angles.

Modern Video Management Systems (VMS) are becoming increasingly more sophisticated by providing necessary protections to prevent digital video from being easily exported from a video management solution. These checks and balances are extremely important, not only to prevent embarrassing or potentially liable moments from becoming public, but they also provide necessary internal controls. Multiple layers of clearances and access rights among authorized users are vital when it comes to the crucial role some VMS systems play within an enterprise.

Gone are the days when surveillance footage was solely an asset used by the security department alone. With the widespread use of video, footage captured by surveillance cameras is now an informational resource used by many different departments for multiple functions within an organization. By enabling different access levels and additional layers of protection in these systems, video can be shared at the appropriate levels, providing maximum security.

Video Management Systems have greatly improved with regards to security and functionality. Find out more on how those improvements provide a solid foundation for future systems by reading Video Management Advancement, an article published in Security Technology Executive.

Author David Jackson is senior product manager, video solutions, American Dynamics.

Let us know how your organization is protecting your surveillance video by leaving a comment. What other concerns do you have about securing video content?

It’s amazing to think that it has been more than a dozen years since security professionals first started to hear about the benefits of IP, or network video. The ability to transmit video over the network enabled virtually anyone with a computer to view video footage from any location so long as they used a network camera with a unique IP address -the birth of IP Video Security.

The security market, and the general population, saw wide-scale deployment of web cameras and nanny cams. For parents, a nanny cam at a daycare provided a sense of comfort; it gave them a chance to check on little Johnny to see how his day was going. For the business owner away on a business trip, it enabled him to see in real-time if his employees were in the office working or taking a long lunch break.

Fast forward to today, and the IP video market has made significant gains since the network camera was first introduced. IP video surveillance solutions have gone from single camera installs and nanny camera usage to enterprise-wide systems leveraging the benefits of mega-pixel cameras and network video recorders handling several terabytes worth of surveillance data.

Like any good disruptive technology, IP video’s introduction to the market was marred by performance issues and greeted with general mistrust by security practitioners, who were wary of issues like security, reliability and efficacy. Countless small IP video firms looking to be first out of the gate were funded and then folded, stung by the early, immature iterations of the technology and the security market’s skepticism of this transformative technology.

Recognizing the current demands of customers as well as their future needs — whether they know them yet or not — has long been a delicate balance. It has been important to ensure that analog solutions, which are still used and in demand by large majority of customers, remain a mainstay of most of today’s video surveillance manufacturers. However, that support for analog must happen in tandem with the creation of a migration path from analog to IP, enabling security directors and other end users to make the shift at their own pace.

Tyco Security Products has embarked on that very mission, and you can read more about our shift to IP by reading a recent interview in Security Sales & Integration with Tyco’s Warren Brown, Director of Global Product Management: Legacy Provider Strives to be an IP Specialist.

What struggles do you have adopting an IP migration strategy?
Let us know in the comments section and maybe we can help.

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While mature market CCTV manufacturers in the United States and Europe are fighting to develop new products focusing in High Definition, Megapixel, Video Analytics, long-term warranty, etc., emerging markets (like Latin America, Africa and Asia Pacific) CCTV purchases are 99% defined by price. That explains why Asian manufacturers succeed so well, not only in their internal markets but also exporting security products to countries with the same buying profile.

So, the big question is how can mature market manufacturers succeed in emerging markets? Following the river? Not exactly… lessons must be learned from the regional voice of customer and then the product portfolio adapted for those markets – definitely in this case the same products do not fit all.

But if price is a competitive advantage for products from Asia Pacific, it is possible to create some differentiators that make real differences for the customer and swing some advantage back to mature market manufacturers. Many times they are willing to pay more for the added benefits – local inventory (or quick delivery) and local warranty (or free warranties) are key differentiators, but product localization (language translation for user interface and technical documentation) also go a long way to making inroads.

Selling CCTV products in emerging markets is very challenging but not impossible – we just need to hear the voice of the market and deliver those differentiators.

Learn more about CCTV in YOUR Emerging Market with a FREE Consultation.

Do you do business in emerging markets, what other differentiators should be considered? Let us know in the Comments area below.