Video analytics - Round table discussions

Our Expert Panel is an opinionated group on a wide variety of topics, and we are dedicated to providing a useful and flexible forum to share those opinions. This week, our panelists address a range of opinions about several self-selected topics, culled from the large number of Expert Panelist responses we have collected in the last year. In this Expert Panel Roundtable article, we will share these varied and insightful responses to ensure they are not lost to posterity!

The new year 2019 is brimming with possibilities for the physical security industry, but will those possibilities prove to be good news or bad news for our market? Inevitably, it will be a combination of good and bad, but how much good and how bad? We wanted to check the temperature of the industry as it relates to expectations for the new year, so we asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: How optimistic is your outlook for the physical security industry in 2019? Why?

The concept of how security systems can contribute to the broader business goals of a company is not new. It seems we have been talking about benefits of security systems beyond “just” security for more than a decade. Given the expanding role of technologies in the market, including video and access control, at what point is the term “security” too restrictive to accurately describe what our industry does? We asked the Expert Panel Roundtable for their responses to this p...

We are living in the age of Big Data, and businesses are inundated with large volumes of data every day. Success depends on capturing, analyzing and ultimately transforming that data into information and intelligence that can be used to improve the business. So, it is with today's physical access control and video systems, too, which also generate unprecedented levels of data. But how can we make the data useful to end users and how can they realize its full value? We asked this week's Expert Pa...

By definition, an edge device is an entry point to a network. In the physical security industry, edge devices are the cameras, sensors, access controllers, readers and other equipment that provide information to the IP networks that drive today’s systems. In the Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing refers to an increasing role of edge devices to process data where it is created instead of sending it across a network to a data center or the cloud. In our market, edge computing takes the...

Where does the time go? Before you know it, here we are at mid-year reflecting on an eventful first half of 2018 in the physical security market. It’s also a good time for our Expert Panel Roundtable to pause and look ahead at what we might expect in the second half of the year. We asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: What technology development will have the greatest impact in the second half of 2018?

Hospitality businesses work to provide a safe and pleasant customer experience for their guests. Hotels offer a “home away from home” for millions of guests every day around the world. These are businesses of many sizes and types, providing services ranging from luxury accommodations to simple lodging for business travelers to family vacation experiences. Hospitality businesses also include restaurants, bars, movie theaters and other venues. Security needs are varied and require tech...

In the analog era, videotape was the storage media of choice for CCTV systems. Since the advent of digital video, and of IP-based systems, a variety of other storage formats have come to the fore, including hard drives, flash drives, SD cards and others. Now we are in the age of the cloud, which offers new opportunities to store vast amounts of video and presents challenges such as bandwidth and cybersecurity. For a current perspective on storage, we asked this week's Expert Panel Roundtable: Ho...

Finding the exact right technology to solve an end user’s problem is challenging, but the rewards are great when an integrator gets it right. A wide range of available product types, price levels and added features increases the likelihood of identifying a technology to solve any problem. But with so many technology and product choices in the marketplace, identifying that one solution can be akin to finding a needle in a haystack. We wondered whether a vast range of product choices is alwa...

You could say concerns about privacy are “trending” in our increasingly data-driven world. Unease about how Facebook and other high-tech companies use and share data dominates the news, and the full impact of new European Union (EU) regulations is about to be felt around the world. By May 25, companies that collect data on EU citizens will need to comply with strict new rules around protecting customer data, as enumerated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But how do t...

The reviews are in, and ISC West was another hit. Brisk attendance and a comprehensive lineup of the industry’s top companies and products contributed to another successful show for Reed Exhibitions. Our Expert Panel Roundtable, who have attended many such events, added their own reflections to the industry’s post-ISC glow. We asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: How successful was ISC West 2018 for security industry exhibitors and visitors?

A big trade show, such as the upcoming ISC West, has a lot to offer for attendees. How can attendees maximize the value they get out of ISC West? For advice, we go to our Expert Panel Roundtable, all seasoned veterans of many big trade shows. Specifically, we asked the panel: How can attendees get the most out of a big trade show like ISC West?

How much does a security system cost? We all know that total costs associated with systems are substantially higher than the “price tag.” There are many elements, tangible and intangible, that contribute to the costs of owning and operating a system. Taking a broad view and finding ways to measure these additional costs enables integrators and users to get the most value from a system at the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO). However, measuring TCO can be easier said than done. We...

In tidying up after a year of Expert Panel Roundtable questions and answers, we came across some previously unpublished responses from our panel. These interesting responses address some of the hottest topics in the industry, from robots and deep learning to the “race to the bottom.” Taken together, the varied comments offer their own range of insights into the evolving physical security market. This week, we highlight some of these assorted Expert Panellist comments submitted over t...

Enterprise customers provide a large, and very lucrative, business opportunity for the physical security market. These customers include big global companies with plenty of revenue to spend and employees and facilities to protect. As a group, enterprise customers also tend to be a demanding lot, requiring systems that are large, scalable, that can operate across a wide geographic area, and that provide top-notch system performance. Enterprise customers set the standards of performance for the en...

In recent years, information technology (IT) departments at end user companies have often been seen as adversaries of traditional security departments – or, at least, as a thorn in their side. One of the issues is territorial: As physical security products have migrated to use of Internet protocols and the network infrastructure, the IT and security departments have clashed – erm… make that interacted – more and more often. New realities such as cybersecurity have made i...

It seems there are more “bad things” happening than ever before. We hear news every day of workplace shootings and terrorist attacks, of smash-and-grab thefts and child abductions. Beyond the possible human tragedy involved, such events pose a persistent question to anyone involved in the realm of security: Could we have prevented it? The first step toward prevention is to predict or foresee an event before it happens. Too often, technology enters the picture after the fact, most com...

We have been hearing about smart buildings for more than a decade, but the increasing profile of the Internet of Things (IoT) expands the possibilities for intelligent building systems and makes them even more attainable. Security is often among the “smart” functions of a building, and the capabilities of many physical security systems can contribute in new ways to building intelligence. We asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: What is the impact of “smart buildings&...

Industry standards make it possible for systems and technologies to connect and work together. Standards enable today’s integrated systems. But does adherence to standards stifle innovation? Does the necessity to interface using an industry-wide standard slow down the implementation of newer (and possibly not standards-compliant) capabilities? Or do standards eliminate extraneous variables, empower more integration and encourage greater innovation? We asked this week’s Expert Panel R...

They call it “critical” for a reason. The so-called “critical infrastructure” is composed of the basic services that citizens have come to depend on, and which are necessary to support society and ensure national stability. The term includes high-visibility segments such as airports, refineries, transportation, wastewater, nuclear reactors, electric utilities, pipelines, and more. Because these functions are so critical, the stakes of providing security are higher than fo...

Video systems today offer more capabilities than ever. Consequently, the systems can be used in new ways. For a variety of reasons, however, many customers don’t take full advantage of the capabilities of their video systems and therefore are leaving value on the table. Education and training are tools to alleviate the situation, but the first step is to identify the new ways that video can be used. We asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: How do customers under-utilize their vi...

Remarkable changes are happening in the video camera market for surveillance applications, including the emergence of lower-priced products that offer features that previously were only available at a much higher price point. Deflating prices of cameras are sometimes referred to as a “race to the bottom” – foreshadowing a market of low-cost cameras that all provide similar features. We asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable to comment on camera pricing trends and how c...

The obvious reason to buy security systems is to promote greater security. But in some cases, there are more specific and/or immediate motivators that lead to a security purchase. Everybody wants more security in the abstract, but how willing are we to pay for it? Security is sometimes seen as a “grudge purchase,” competing for tight corporate dollars with other investments that may seem more appealing or urgent. But other times an event occurs that moves security to the top of the l...

Big data is a buzzword, and data – presumably of all sizes – is a driving force in the physical security market. As systems become more sophisticated and expand their capabilities, the result is more data; in some cases, a lot more data. But a key question is: What do we do with the data? How do we use it to provide value? How do we interpret it, and transform it into useful information and/or intelligence? We presented the topic of data to our Expert Panel Roundtable and came away w...

A busy trade show abounds with new products and expanded features, colorful signage and blinking video screens, all competing for attention from busy attendees. It’s a microcosm of how the security marketplace – or any market, for that matter – sells its products. But what happens if the reality turns out different to the sales pitch? What happens when product or system performance doesn’t quite live up to the claims? Some would call that hype, and it can lead to disillus...

Technology is changing at a break-neck pace, and the security marketplace is currently being bombarded by a wealth of new capabilities and innovations. But what will be the impact? Which of the currently-hyped new innovations will have a major impact, and which will fade over time? And even acknowledging the long-term significance of various technologies, what can we expect to be the more immediate effect? We asked this week’s Expert Panel Roundtable: What new security technology is poised...

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) describes standards as guidelines or characteristics for activities or for their results, aimed at achieving the optimum degree of order. They might include product standards, test methods, codes of practice, guideline standards, and management systems standards. In the security marketplace, there are many standards currently used, including those from organizations such as ONVIF, PSIA and ASIS International. Might the value of standardiza...

Once again, ISC West has come and gone. The show continues to please exhibitors and attendees. Reviews are generally glowing and enthusiastic. For all its successes, however, there is a certain repetition from year to year – a lot of the same players, the same technology trends (not to mention the same venue every year, but who doesn’t like Vegas?) But even among the repetition, there is usually at least one element that is surprising. Perhaps it’s the unexpected elements that...

The minutes are counting down to one of the biggest security industry trade shows of the 2017 calendar. Expectations are high going into ISC West 2017 in Las Vegas: Last year’s show was very well attended and highlighted lots of new technologies. Looking ahead to this year’s show, we wanted to get the Expert Panel Roundtable’s take on what news will dominate the show. So we asked our panel: What do you expect to be the big news at ISC West 2017?

Open systems are great at providing freedom for end user customers. But does the term “open system” mean the same thing throughout the industry? In the bad old days before the introduction and broad acceptance of open systems, security vendors produced proprietary systems that used only their own hardware and software. This locked in a customer to a specific vendor’s product line, and if another vendor offered a better product, the only way to get it was to switch to that vendo...