Is IP Surveillance for You?

IP surveillance as we all know is the future of surveillance thanks to the enormous benefits it offers including cost effectiveness and ease of deployment, expandability, and flexibility in use. Surveillance cameras can be connected over the Internet to allow monitoring from anywhere in the world. With the popularity of wireless cameras, IP surveillance can be extended to areas where wiring is not possible or not cost effective. To implement an IP based surveillance three things are required. One needs a network that can be wireless or wired, cameras that will define quality of feed, and monitoring and recording system that will store and analyze recorded footage. Few points that should be kept in mind include security of footage while it is transferred from camera to monitoring system and access to footage. This can be taken care of by using encryption techniques and authentication. Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layers (HTTPS) and VPNs can be effective in securing data while it is transferred.

Application areas

In this section, we will try to find out application areas of IP surveillance. Application areas of this technique are diverse and include scenarios where safety, security, monitoring and quality control is high on priority. With the recent Mumbaiterror attacks, the importance of IP surveillance has further increased and in a country like India, where law enforcement bodies are under tremendous pressure due to huge population, IP surveillance can increase their reach. Below are some areas where IP surveillance can be effective.

Counter terrorism

Live visuals from 26/11 attack came from CCTV cameras installed inside the hotel. These feeds were helpful to security agencies involved in that operation. This has again proven importance of surveillance to counter terrorism. One important point here is that, IP surveillance can be used as a preventive measure. Consider if IP cameras are installed in sensitive areas like busy markets and train stations and intelligent analysis of videos is done at the back end. Here an automated alarm is raised if there is any triggering pattern difference. For example, in busy markets camera can raise alarm for bomb if an object of a particular size and shape is found lying for too long. Now taking IP surveillance to borders can control movement across borders. Instead of patrolling, intelligent surveillance can be more effective especially at night (with usage of thermal cameras).

Financial institutions

There is a clear guideline set by RBI for banks maintaining cash chests to have IP surveillance and ATM machines fitted with cameras. These techniques besides being effective in securing assets also help in enhancing confidence of customers. Cameras can be of great help in preventing robberies, check frauds and in crime investigation. Intelligent surveillance can be used to raise alarm if a particular face is recognized that was involved in check fraud or other safety breach. With advances in technology behavior recognizability is even possible.

Transportation

There is a huge requirement of surveillance in this domain. IP based cameras can be installed at traffic crossings helping traffic cops to penalize people from jumping signals or over-speeding. One can fit cameras at sensitive buildings restricting cars to tale gate while entering premises. Alarm can be raised if the distance between two cars entering perimeters is too short. One great example of this technique is automatic toll collection booths on national highways.