Security Sales & Integration March 2023 - 24

VIDEO
IMAGING RECORDING MANAGEMENT
Unified Approach to Video Management
Mitigates Risks by Eric Bassier
▶ There are more high-resolution cameras
out there than ever before, and they're
producing better, cleaner and much more
video surveillance data. In addition, compliance
and business requirements are
driving a need for longer retention times.
Besides surveillance, customers are
looking to use cameras to do things like
prevent shoplifting, analyze shopper behavior
and scan for specific objects within
frames of video. There are a couple of different
kinds of analytics at play - realtime
and forensic.
Real-time analytics are something clients
are already familiar with; the kind
that we picture when we think of surveillance:
the security officer sitting in a security
operations center watching footage to
keep an eye out for dangerous actors or a
potential breach.
However, businesses are relying more
and more on " forensic " analytics, which
is analysis of collected video data to improve
things like performance, efficiency
and to inform business decisions.
This is one of the reasons retention times
are increasing. Because of this, managing
video surveillance data across its lifecycle
has become much more complex, and the
legacy solutions for clients to store their
data are unsustainable and costly in today's
climate of massive data growth.
Many clients continue the legacy approach
of adding more dedicated servers
to keep up with their growing data storage
needs and to support multiple applications.
But adding servers, especially at
a rapidly increasing rate to support data
growth and new physical security applications,
increases complexity and the risk
of frame and footage loss.
Risks can include a crashed or totally
lost server from both natural and manmade
disasters, or data being stored in only
one physical location with a legacy solution,
like a standard network video record24
Clients
want camera analytics for
real-time and forensic information,
but a legacy system may pose greater
potential for data loss.
er (NVR), when a server is compromised,
the result is a complete loss of data.
Beyond these tangible risk factors, the
legacy approach also requires more manpower
to manage and the physical space
to house the growing number of servers,
the correlating costs with purchasing and
supporting more hardware is unsustainable.
For example, we worked with a federal
agency that had more than 100 racks
of servers all in one datacenter and were
continuing to add servers at a rapid pace.
With all of this in mind, one of the
biggest considerations you should have
is whether or not your clients are using
a modern video surveillance infrastructure.
And if not, what will their transition
look like?
For many organizations, the transition
from multiple physical servers or NVRs to
a modern, unified server and storage software
solution sounds complex, but it's very
simple to manage and scale as needed.
A unified solution is highly resilient, retains
data even if hardware fails, can scale
easily and has the added advantage of being
able to run multiple physical security applications
on one common infrastructure.
In considering more modern video
surveillance infrastructure, data retention
Security Sales & Integration MARCH 2023
should be top of mind. If your clients are
using racks and racks of individual standard
NVRs to record and store data, it
may be time to consider a new approach.
Losing data when an NVR goes down
doesn't just mean losing footage; it can
mean losing crucial business intelligence.
Fortunately, a modern infrastructure is
not actually complex or difficult to set up
and deploy. Today's unified infrastructure
solutions are purpose-built for video and
are created to be easy to install and scale.
It's important to begin by working
around the sunken cost fallacy and the
idea that your client may have that if they
have already come this far, they might as
well keep going.
The reality is that when you compare
continuing the legacy approach indefinitely
vs. switching to a modern infrastructure
- plus the risk and resulting cost of losing
video data when an NVR fails - the cost
of the switch makes more sense in the long
run. With a unified software-based server
and storage infrastructure, the data is retained,
and the system continues to operate,
even in the event of a failure.
With the client I mentioned earlier, we
were able to replace their many racks of
NVRs with a unified server and storage
infrastructure quickly and with a painless
transition - and with immediate cost
savings and lower risk. Now, they're down
to a dozen or less server racks, and have
peace of mind their data is retained.
It can be hard to wrap your mind
around the idea that hundreds of servers
needed to manage massive amounts
of data can be pared down to one single,
scalable platform, but it's the reality of
the future of data management, and fortunately,
it's already here.
ERIC BASSIER is Senior Director of
Products at data management
provider Quantum.
securitysales.com
ALINSTOCK/STOCK.ADOBE.COM
http://www.securitysales.com
Security Sales & Integration March 2023

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