Video surveillance for large enterprises must address certain needs facing end users. For example, amid higher property and rental prices, users are focusing more on maximizing return on investment and lowering total cost of ownership. Then, there’s the cybersecurity issue, after IP cameras were used to launch DDoS attacks last year.
Video surveillance for large enterprises must address certain needs facing end users. For example, amid higher property and rental prices, users are focusing more on maximizing return on investment and lowering total cost of ownership. Then, there’s the cybersecurity issue, after IP cameras were used to launch DDoS attacks last year.
Those were the points made by
Arecont Vision in its recent webinar titled Video Surveillance for Large Enterprises.
Offices and enterprises these days are faced with increased operating expenses. This has a lot to do with surging property and rental prices. According to a 2015 survey by JLL, the No. 1 to No. 5 cities in the world with the most expensive commercial rent, respectively Hong Kong, London, Beijing, New York and Singapore, had per-square-foot monthly rent from US$100 to $300. In another whitepaper by Siemens, a workplace in London already costs up to 27,000 euros per employee per year.
As a result, return on investment and total cost of ownership are factors that companies must consider when implementing video surveillance, which needs to cover various areas in the office building including parking lots, driveways, walkways, loading docks, offices and storage areas, among others.
According to Arecont Vision, a multi-sensor, multi-megapixel camera can help the end user in this regard, saving them the cost in equipment and infrastructure. A 10MP camera, for example, provides more than 18,000 pixels per dollar when compared with VGA-resolution cameras, which provide only 1,500 Pp$. With multi-sensors, one camera can provide up to four unique field-of-views. This can come in handy especially at odd hallways, concourses and parking lots.
“It can help end users gain better situational awareness and achieve further liability reduction,” said Scott Schafer, Executive VP at Arecont Vision. “Further, using fewer cameras translates into infrastructure cost savings due to less labor, cables, mounts, housings, VMS/NVR license fees and maintenance.”
While these features can help companies save cost, more and more enterprises are now concerned with the security of their devices. This is especially the case after a string of recent events in which hackers exploited vulnerabilities in cameras. The most impactful one took place in October last year, when IoT devices including network cameras and NVRs infected with the Mirai malware were used to launch DDoS attacks against Dyn, an Internet performance management company. The result was a shutdown of service across various websites including Netflix and Amazon.com.
As a result users in large enterprises as well as in other sectors are more careful with their devices now than ever. “If you’re selling to a corporate or enterprise, oftentimes they want to know about architecture and cyber because the CIO might be involved with the security director on understanding the solution they are proposing,” Schafer said.
According to Schafer, common operating systems such as Linux can pose a cybersecurity risk to network-enabled devices running the OS. “We use our own machine code as part of our in-house developed MPIP architecture on the FPGA IC chip installed in every one of our cameras,” Schafer said. “Should a hacker gain access to an Arecont Vision camera or obtain the user ID and 16-digit ASCII password to log into the camera, the attack would only impact that device. Our cameras have never been reported as being used in any cybersecurity attacks.”