The choice of surveillance cameras has its price, What risk might your security system have?

Setting up a reliable network video surveillance system, robust and of quality depends entirely on devices that actually meet these requirements, as analyzed by Sergio Fukushima, technical manager of Axis Communications for South America.

This year, Axis lost a project of more than three hundred cameras for road use. Within weeks, the vast majority of installed devices showed water infiltration, so it has been necessary to account for the costs associated with the integrator’s labor for the replacement of the cameras and to add the costs linked to equipment downtime.

The fragility of a video surveillance system can be physical, like in this case, or software, like vulnerabilities that can facilitate unauthorized access. Worse than water entering a chamber might be a hacker getting in, and the perception of risk generally only occurs when the purchase decision has already been made, the project has already been installed and integrated, and the problem has already been escalated.

The plurality of manufacturers in the professional video surveillance market has led client IT and security teams to follow a decision-making process different from the one practiced a few years ago: it is no longer enough for them to put the specifications of their product on paper, but the so-called proof of concept has become increasingly common, según el cual el cliente instala las cámaras en una situación real durante un periodo de tiempo para avalar por sí mismo el rendimiento de los equipos antes de escoger la marca y así verificar si lo que dice el fabricante corresponde con los hechos.

Pese a que lo anterior reduce el riesgo de fracasos en el proyecto después de realizar la inversión, la realidad es que toda decisión implica dificultades. Elegir una u otra marca determina el grado de riesgo que el cliente está dispuesto a asumir, considerando la reputación de sus competidores, las garantías, la disponibilidad y agilidad del soporte técnico, el historial de otros clientes, investments in media to protect the system against cyber-attacks carried out by private groups and government agencies, among other indicators.

There is also a risk of finding entire batches with serious defects. In some cases, the problem makes the images unusable for viewing. Although any manufacturer is theoretically subject to these failures, it is essential to adopt a rigorous quality control process to reduce this possibility.

When the camera reaches the customer's hands and is taken out of the box, it must work perfectly. To ensure that no error goes unnoticed, the products must be tested automatically and manually, including high-pressure water jet tests, strong impacts against the camera and hours and hours of continuous vibration.

In this sense, a product only has its continuous development at Axis after passing through the sieve of a technical team that evaluates various elements, among them, image quality. But in addition to the price paid by the customer, each choice also has implications for the environment.

According to Axis's audited data, más del 85% all of their network cameras and video encoders are PVC-free, a material that has a negative impact on nature. Some devices have an energy consumption much lower than that of a Les lamp, and all of this must be considered with tomorrow in mind.

Al dedicar más tiempo al análisis de estos factores antes de realizar una compra, se dedicará menos tiempo a estos aspectos tras realizar la inversión. La participación de fabricantes con propuestas aparentemente similares realmente exige un proceso de decisión detallado y con criterio por parte de los clientes, y que se involucre directamente en la elección y haga valer sus intereses. In the end, es también él quien pagará más caras las consecuencias.

Sergio Fukushima

Gerente técnico de Axis Communications para América del Sur