Big data is a buzz word. Many industries have tried to reply by analyzing big data to make good predictions on everything ranging from weather forecasts to decision making in different forms and subjects. However, why has the security industry also become so fascinated by "big data?" The reason could be traced back to the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing investigation. The United States successfully crowdsourced information from social media, like @Twitter and @Facebook, and multiple video surveillance cameras to quickly identify and locate the criminals. This lesson opened the eyes of the whole world to learn the power of using mass data provided by the public, and more importantly, the different resources from security systems.
However, many experts also pointed out current security systems do not provide much information before an event even though they are connected to an IP network. Therefore, the industry has been trying to figure out how to make security equipment get involved in pre-event management and also play an active role in preventing crimes or disasters, instead of merely acting as a tool for post-event investigation. Of course, first of all, networkability is definitely a must in security devices, then, each device must be connected, like multiple sensors, to provide data. Then, there is intelligent video (or VCA), which is getting more important since it helps to make security information meaningful. By using intelligent video, security systems can produce loss prevention data or heat maps for retailers. Whenever the video security systems are connected with "external" WiFi-enabled tracking devices, the shop can better prevent perspective shoplifters and plan their marketing campaigns. Secondarily, it needs a proactive situational awareness tool, something like physical security information management software (PSIM), to seamlessly integrate different security and non-security equipment and further provide an immediate response to events.
In addition, through cloud computing, all the data is processed in the cloud; therefore, people are starting to wonder who is able to access this data and how to protect the integrity of the data. In the physical security world, we may also care about who is in my space and where these visitors are going and what they are doing. Therefore, identity management may play a vital role in the trend of big data.
To sum up, when the world starts to look into "big data" and how IoT can benefit everyone, the trend forces the security industry to gradually switch their attention to data and content beyond product specifications to better fit the needs of a connected world. Major technologies providers have started to add more value to security information/content with their unique approaches.
Ultra-high 4K Resolutpon and Wide-angle Cameras Provide More Details
Although the improvement to 4K resolution seems very natural in consumer electronics and security technologies, 4K-resolution, ultra-high HD security cameras still captured the limelight at major security shows this year. Whenever 4K starts to become the mainstream in the industry, security cameras can be expected to provide more detailed and clearer video images of the environment, events, and subjects than the past. More importantly, 4K resolution cameras can largely reduce the total cost of ownership of a project by doing more with less, compared to low resolution cameras. Companies such as Axis Communications, Arecont Vision, Bosch Security Systems, Hikvison Digital Technology, IQinVision, and Sony Electronics all pre-announced 4K cameras last month. Performing at 30 frames per second makes 4K cameras stand out. "Arecont Vision 4K camera produces high-quality image at 30 frames per second and delivers about 8.3 megapixels. Arecont Vision's 1.0-megapixel camera delivers 7 frames per second. When it was released in 2010, it was the first dual mode 1.0-megapixel and 1080p camera in the industry," said Scott Schafer, Executive VP of Sales, Marketing, and Service at Arecont Vision. It can be predicted that all these companies should have their 4K cameras ready for the market later this year. However, some experts still warn that 4K camera users need to pay extra attention to selecting compatible 4K NVRs and monitors. Without using a 4K monitor, the video quality might be compromised.
Pelco is focusing on a different approach to provide more details to situational awareness video with their latest 360-degree camera, which is a joint venture combining OnCamGrandeye's technology and Pelco's video managment applications. Coupled with Pelco's customer support and service, this adds an important tool to the market, said Craig Dahlman, Director-Analog Video Products of Video Line of Business at Pelco by Schneider Electric. Similar products can also be seen at other major network video surveillance vendors, like Panasonic System Communications. Panasonic's 360-degree PTZ cameras enable several different viewing options. For example, diverse image distribution modes, including four independent video streams for maximum flexibility.
Intelligent Video Helps Deliver Meaningful Messages
It is not enough to have a high-resolution video only for generating data. In order to acquire meaningful information, rather than just raw data, and even provide timely diagnosis/response to an event, intelligent video is the best candidate, when talking about big data. What it influences in the security field now is how to use the accumulated data from intelligent video for different purposes. "The focuses of video surveillance innovations have evolved from video functionality, to video integration, and now to video enabling. By enabling processes with video, the open platform fosters many innovations to optimize business operations in different verticals," according to Karl Erik Traberg, Head of Corporate Communications and Business Development at Milestone Systems.
For example, "A retail store uses multiple cameras enabling real-time analytics such as traffic counting, queue management, heat maps and demographics. The system accumulates all the information by date and time, and if associated with the POS information, can deliver key information, such as average sale and conversion metrics. Ultimately, and depending on the information, retailers can leverage these insights to adjust their marketing strategies and even staffing for different time periods," said Masa Karahashi, Senior VP, Engineering at 3VR.
Hank Monaco, VP of Marketing at Tyco Integrated Security also further explained in a big picture, "For many retailers, we are also seeing a big move now toward leveraging multiple technologies working together to help drive higher store performance. For instance, retailers are finding that leveraging video services to gain visibility into POS activity helps to drive improved customer experiences and manage more accurately what is on the shelf which also can lead to higher sales. We see technologies working together, such as EAS used byond loss protection, and tied into POS register, RFID for inventory tracking, and also analytic video to understand customers' behaviors, such as dwell time — how much time a customer stands in front of the stock display without making a purchase or how fast a customer picks up a product(s) from a shelf and then makes a purchase. Essentially, retailers are seeing that technology that does more can also help them make decisions in the store on a more predictive basis and allows them to see farther ahead. This drives the store performance which helps them gain competitive advantage and improved bottom line results."
We can imagine that, if the information is also shared with or connected to other non-security, external systems, it could be something really valuable even to city surveillance or other researches.
However, how to reduce false alarms in intelligent video is always the focus for security. The latest motion sensor detection sensors by Mobotix are able to filter the objects according to directions of movement. Therefore, it only records video or triggers an alarm if an important event actually occurs. Interference caused, for instance, by trees moving in the wind, shadows, passing clouds, or snowfall is consistently ignored.
Thermal Comes To Intelligent Video for 24/7 Detection
In some particular scenarios, intelligent video might meet certain limitations and challenges. "The main drawback of standard CCTV systems arises from their reliance on reflected light — inability to operate at night, adverse effects due to shadows and lighting changes," according to the research paper titled "Thermo-Visual Feature Fusion for Object Tracking Using Multiple Spatiogram Trackers," by Ciarán Ó Conaire et al. For a critical environment, the combination of thermal cameras and intelligent video is a good match for 24/7 detection. After the partnership of FLIR Systems and VideoIQ in 2010, FLIR also recently partnered with PureTech Systems for wide area surveillance solution.
Another piece of good news for the industry is that the falling price in thermal technology will allow more security cameras to enjoy the benefits of thermal. FLIR announced the release of three new lines of its thermal security cameras starting at economical prices, which further demonstrates how the combination of thermal cameras and intrusion video analytics can actually be an affordable and also effective solution, said Andy Teich, President and CEO of FLIR Systems. At the same time, DVTel also announced its thermal cameras at an affordable price, also featuring intelligent video analytics.
FLIR also launched its cloud-based platform for users to remotely access their security cameras. In the future, thermal with intelligent video cameras will also start to provide more meaningful data to make our environment safer.
Open Platforms Drive Total Integration
Integration has been an unstoppable trend in all industries, especially when it comes to IoT. Eventually, in a connected world, every system will be connected in a single network. The security industry will also continue to evolve. To build up a future-proof solution, integrating different systems through proprietary SDKs and APIs no longer seems like enough. Companies now concentrate on how to construct a more open platform in order to seamlessly manage and utilize different resources in different security equipment. According to Genetec's white paper, it suggests that a truly unified platform in video surveillance can optimize resources by sharing common servers and databases for authentication and permission, licensing, configuration settings, alarms and evens, audit and activity log, video recording, and access logs.
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Looking at the access control market only, it has been actively developing with the introduction of different new technologies. The market's high growth still mainly comes from the migration from mechanical locks to electronic locks. However, what is really driving the growth of the market is the need for open platforms. Access control systems, in the past, were very closed, simply for restricting entrance to a building, room, and property. Until recently, users have started to realize the benefits whenever it links with other systems. "What really differentiates us from other companies is, in our hardware and firmware. We develop to an open platform and protocol, which is very critical for the credentials and access control systems for future expansion or integration of other future technologies. That is why we are chosen for replacement projects and also big projects, like One World Trade Center," said April Daltron-Noblitt, Director of Vertical Marketing at Allegion.
Both the access control and video surveillance markets are developing their solutions very fast in open platforms, which also is closely tying both sides together. Companies, like Axis, Avigilon, and Genetec have developed their own integrated systems. The partnership of video and access control companies has become basic to form an integrated system. "Genetec offers its end users a unified security platform, which seamlessly integrates video, access control, and license plate recognition. The open platform supports a vast ecosystem of cameras, access control edge devices and third party software tools, including analytics, biometrics and perimeter detection hardware. Genetec's IP access control system is also increasing its compatibility with other access control hardware products. The most recent ones are our partnerships with ASSA ABLOY and Salto, who produce quality WiFi, PoE wireless locks," said Andrew Elvish, VP of Marketing and Communication at Genetec.
On the other hand, PSIM is not only able to supervise multiple distinct systems and further manage information coming from these systems, but also presents all the information in a single user interface, which plays a vital role in big data and IoT. "Verint recently launched a new situation management platform that allows users to integrate a variety of systems providing real-time intelligence to respond to events," said Courtney Mamuscia, Global Communications Director of Verint Video & Situation Intelligence Solutions at Verint Systems. "This new solution expands our current PSIM application that has experienced significant growth in the critical infrastructure sectors and city-wide surveillance."
However, some experts also warn that some PSIM products might have problems in lacking a built-in video, access control, and event integrated solution, which should be the key for selecting a "real" PSIM.
Social and Business Identity Takes Shape
While IoT gradually takes shape in the access control industry, end users have become more comfortable with making online payment via cards, PCs, tablets, mobile phones, and other wearable devices. Paym, a UK-based company, announced in April that consumers can use their mobile to make bank payments in the country. This trend is also going toward granting physical access control remotely via mobile devices, making access control as a service (ACaaS) gain more adoption. Furthermore, Brivo Labs claimed itself an IoT company, which launched its and also the industry's first social access management solution this year. Its main objective is to use social identities to "develop innovative applications that connect virtual communities with physical spaces," said on Brivo Labs' website. According to Lee Odess, VP of Marketing at Brivo Systems and GM of Brivo Labs, by using Brivo Labs' API platform, physical access authorization now can be granted by using your profile on social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, on mobile devices and wearable computing devices, such as Google Glass. It is truly a revolution in the physical access control field. Next, Brivo will develop their solution to adopt Bluetooth devices to provide end users more convenience to remotely access and manage doors.
Identity Management Spurs Growth of Biometrics
When we, as end users, start to enjoy the freedom of multiple ways of payment and easy access to a space, worries about the security mechanism in these solutions arise. What makes things worse is when we lose our credit cards, with tap-and-pay-on-the-go feature, or mobile phones or devices, it also means we lose our credentials and even precious money. On the other hand, for enterprise users, especially multinational companies, how to well secure their physical and intellectual property, help workers make mobile offices work more efficiently, and get easy access in these spaces without spending extra time and paper work becomes their top priority in access control. A robust identity management solution becomes prerequisite for users ranging from public to enterprise users. For enterprise users, multi-factor identities for both physical and logical security could be the best choice; biometrics is an important factor binding all these together.
"HID acquired IdenTrust to expand our identity management and secure authentication solutions offering, and enable us to provide banking customers with a trust network for issuing, authenticating, and using digital identities based on open standards," said Jeremy Hyatt, Director of Global Public Relations of HID Global. "Our Lumidigm acquisition extends our multi-factor authentication portfolio with biometrics for high-security environments, while positioning us to deliver a variety of new secure identity solutions." Besides, biometrics also becomes a unique selling point for different fields because of its unique identification feature, according to Bill Spence, VP of Sales of North America, Europe and Australia at Lumidigm. In amusement parks, biometrics has attracted many return customers. Lumidigm's solution was adopted by amusement parks, where parents' fingerprints had to match their child's RFID wristband when collecting them from the park grounds. On top of that, the system can also ensure that only one person uses each ticket. To prevent ticket fraud, parks today can link each ticket to a specific customer with the touch of a finger.
The demand for identity management provides new startups with pretty big business opportunities too. Bionym developed the first wearable authentication device that utilizes a user's electrocardiogram (ECG) to validate a person's identity, according to their company website. Zwipe, a new, next-generation biometric card, a contactless smart card credential with on-card fingerprint reading, eliminates the problems of solely deploying PINs and standard cards. The contactless Zwipe biometric card lets users authenticate themselves directly on the card through something they are, a fingerprint, using their already installed card reader. Only then will the card system activate the lock. This is much more secure than simply using a standard card, which verifies only something they carry, the card. Also many companies, which develop NFC rings and bracelets, intend to provide more flexible and innovative solutions to secure our access to either the virtual or non-virtual world.
A Connected World Makes a Safer Environment?
Thanks to IoT, we can expect a connected world in the future. Although new technologies bring us more convenience in terms of mass information and life comfort, do these also help us construct a safer environment? Without making security the priority, I am afraid that all these new and innovative technologies would be in vain. If the aforementioned developments in the security industry can cause everyone to be more aware of security, I would say the future of this connected world will be bright.
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