Privacy and cybersecurity have always been concerns when it comes, especially with mass surveillance and connectivity growing the way it is.
Privacy and cybersecurity have always been concerns when it comes, especially with mass surveillance and connectivity growing the way it is. The implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe in 2018 has only brought more attention to these issues.
Offerings provide enhanced privacy
Last year,
Axis Communications introduced its Live Privacy Shield to protect users’ privacy. The edge-based application lives in the camera, making it more scalable, and lets users set up different zones for live redaction without affecting the video forensically.
The Privacy Shield allows operators to “remove the detail” of certain individuals as to not breach the privacy of the persons in frame.
Maybe there’s been some violence in a public space and you want to be able to see the faces of the perpetrators. That’s for evidence that will go to law enforcement. But actually you'll need to protect the privacy of the people who were in that scene,” explained Daren Lang, Regional Business Development Manager, North Europe at Axis Communications. “So what you can do is redact faces, people that are not relevant to the scene, but keep the faces of people that are.”
From a forensic standpoint, the footage can still be completely un-redacted so that in a court of law the full video is there. However, when conducting investigations individual faces and areas can be redacted.
Privacy shield became standard as part of Axis’ latest software release. “We believe that privacy should be a common standard and there will be no charge for that. It will be part of the feature set of the software. The privacy of people is absolutely paramount,” Lang emphasized.
To help customers comply with privacy policies such as GDPR,
Genetec’s latest version of Security Center — the company’s unified security platform — features an enhanced privacy protection layer. This layer builds upon the company’s KiwiVision Privacy Protector technology.
Increasing importance of cybersecurity
As the threat of cyberattacks grows, cybersecurity has become increasingly important. In fact, the global cybersecurity market is expected to reach US$248.3 billion by 2023, according to a report by MarketsandMarkets. Market growth is attributed to the growing number of connected devices as a result of the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as stricter data protection regulations such as GDPR.
In the security market, cybersecurity has become the focus of many of the latest upgrades and offerings. Companies like Genetec are addressing security vulnerabilities with features like Security Score, which is part of Security Center’s version 5.8 release.
For some time we have been encouraging our customers to take care of their systems in terms of making sure that they harden their system to prevent against any sort of malicious attacks or events,” according to the representative of Genetec. “In this version of software, what we've done is we've automated that.”
The feature allows customers to run a cybersecurity checklist. It will then go through and grade the system to identify where there are weaknesses and vulnerabilities. For example, if there are cameras running on default passwords or cameras with out of date firmware, the system would identify and alert the user to these potential risks.
Axis has built-in a number of defaults within its products to enhance its cybersecurity. “There are no default root-type passwords now. You have to be able to set up an individual password for one of our devices for it to sit on the network,” Lang explained. “This will force users into a situation so that somebody has to set up passwords.”
Further education in the market is also paramount. Providing white papers, hardening guides and best practices to security installers and end users will ensure that cybersecurity will never go unnoticed.