Video integration with access expected to continue

Video integration with access control has been happening for years and access control industry players believe this will continue as part of a wider integration trend.

“Integration in general will be critically important for manufacturers of both access control and video components, such as cameras and management systems. The shift toward video integrated with access control is a natural extension of this trend and manufacturers that make this a critical component of their offering will be more successful than those that don’t,” said Andrew Fulton, Head of Product Management for Access Control at Vanderbilt.

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Nancy Islas, President of Maxxess Systems, said: “Any entity with a NoC or SoC will experience immediate benefits by merging all critical surveillance, access control, security systems and two-way communications onto a unified platform. Such higher levels of integration provide security and operations management with total situational awareness, allowing them to coordinate the activities of first responders and the people they are protecting with the information they need to know in the event of an emergency.”

Rick Caruthers, President of Galaxy Control System, said industry professionals were “increasingly looking for higher levels of systems integration to consolidate operations and tie in previously disparate system capabilities on a unified platform.”

“Galaxy Systems has supported VMS integration for the last several years and we will continue to expand with new integration partners as they arise,” he added.

Jason Spielfogel, Director of Product Management at Identiv, said video “represents a simple way to visually verify an access control event, and access control represents additional data that can be used in a surveillance investigation. The prerequisite for such integration really depends on how the end user uses their system, but whenever cameras are co-located near access control checkpoints, it is a waste of investment to not have them integrated together and, once integrated, provide an amazingly fast way to verify events and validate correct/incorrect practices.”

While both live and recorded video will continue to be of value, solutions that can leverage images to enhance security — for example, facial recognition on the video stream — will likely be most popular, according to Vince Wenos, VP of Global Technology and Engineering at Allegion."It is important to note that expanded use of video technology in the consumer electronics space for logical access control and payments is positively changing end-user perceptions and acceptance, which will allow for greater deployment and adoption in the traditional physical access control world,” Wenos said.

Vanderbilt’s Fulton said solutions offering both access control and video management in a more cloud-based format were being chosen by small to medium-sized enterprises, due to the price point and services offered. Other verticals that could benefit from video integration included those in which video was a critical component to access control, such as health care, education, financial services, higher education, casinos and hospitality, he added.

Richard Huison, Regional Manager for the U.K. and Europe at Gallagher Security, sees video surveillance integration with access control as driven more by manufacturers and suppliers trying to differentiate themselves, rather than by market need or desire. 

Instead of being a necessity for every application, Huison believes video integration with access control should be based on individual need. “Video integration simply isn’t practical or worthwhile as there isn’t the manpower to monitor video where there is a huge access control throughput. I’m thinking here of hospitals and education, for example. For instance, at Kings College London, the Gallagher access control system controls a million door movements every month!”