By Mark Michaelides, CEO at Antare (pictured)
Recent reporting on CCTV failures on Britain’s rail network highlights a familiar problem for users of security cameras. When an incident occurs, the footage that organisations rely on is either unavailable due to faulty or missing cameras, is incomplete, or is discovered too late to make a difference.
Missing footage is just one symptom of the larger challenge facing users of security cameras. Organisations are generating more video than ever before from body-worn or fixed security cameras but they struggle to translate this footage into better decisions, faster incident response or improved user outcomes. Meanwhile, security leaders have to contend with stringent privacy rules and regulations regarding the footage they record and how they handle it.
To date, the security camera industry has focused on capturing evidence. The next phase of innovation requires a rethink of how body-worn and fixed security cameras work, not just in terms of hardware, but in software that accurately reviews and analyses footage to identify important information and insights. Crucially, these advances must be achieved while placing the utmost emphasis on privacy.
Recording is no longer enough
Body-worn and fixed security cameras were introduced to provide an objective record of events. Their purpose was straightforward: capture evidence, store it securely, and make it available for review when needed. Many cameras still operate under this model today, and treat recording footage as the end goal rather than the beginning of a wider process.
The first issue with this approach is timing: specifically, whether a camera is recording at the right time that you need it to be.
Every incident has a beginning, a middle and an end. For body-worn camera users, this means having to remember to switch the camera on when an incident begins. However, this means important contextual information before an incident can be missed due to human error. Often, organisations investigating an incident only have the closing moments of an incident to review. They must rely on witness accounts to reconstruct the rest for themselves.
The second is the inability of current camera systems to help organisations respond immediately to recorded footage and take appropriate action.
Frontline users frequently operate in high-pressure, time-sensitive environments with little room to pause and analyse video in real time. Critical details are easily buried in hours of routine footage, while manual review is expensive, slow and resource-intensive.
The limitations of manual review
In a conventional workflow, an incident occurs, footage is captured, files are uploaded and stored, and somebody reviews them later. However, that review might not happen for hours, days or even weeks after the event. The people conducting the review are also likely to be far removed from the original incident.
As a result, incidents are missed entirely, context is overlooked and operational insights are lost. By the time the review process concludes, the opportunity to act may already have passed. As such, relying solely on manual review is unsustainable; what’s needed is technology that removes this burden from staff.
From recording devices to intelligent cameras
Rather than acting as passive recording devices, modern camera systems must be able to capture all incidents and automatically analyse, index and report on footage, with minimal input required from users.
Robust, resilient hardware is important, but true success will come when this is paired with software that turns a static camera into an intelligent one.
From a hardware perspective, continuous capture enables a body-worn camera user to do their job without having to think about turning their camera on at the right moment. They should still, however, have the option to temporarily stop recording when they require a moment of personal privacy, such as during a bathroom break.
Features such as automated categorisation, transcription, incident detection, intelligent search and pattern recognition all help organisations unlock greater value from footage. By revealing patterns and risks that may otherwise remain hidden, they enable faster decision-making and more efficient use of resources.
In this way, cameras shift from being purely evidence-collection tools to intelligence-generation tools.
A useful parallel is with the automotive industry. Increasingly, the performance of a vehicle is determined not solely by its hardware but by the software that powers it. Security cameras are undergoing a similar transition.
Prioritising privacy at all costs
Underpinning any innovation in security camera technology should be an unwavering commitment to privacy, covering those using the cameras and anyone who may appear in recorded footage. This is an integral piece of the puzzle that should never be ignored, neglected or glossed over.
The concept of continuous capture will naturally attract privacy concerns. To mitigate these, both the cameras and their underlying software should possess features that enable reliable incident capture without being intrusive.
From a hardware perspective, cameras should incorporate elements such as visible recording indicators, a button to give wearers moments of privacy when they need it, and encryption of all footage on the device. Regarding software, all footage should also be encrypted while in transit, and stored in a secure cloud location with role-based access, so only authorised personnel can access it. Stored footage should be deleted from the cloud after a 30-day period, unless flagged for retention by an approved user. Naturally, systems should also be designed to comply with regulations such as GDPR, SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
A new dawn for security
The debate around body-worn and fixed security cameras should no longer fixate on matters such as whether an incident was recorded at all, or how a business can feasibly trawl through thousands of hours of footage to properly investigate and report on an incident. Organisations increasingly need systems that can record and automatically identify, classify and analyse important information at speed.
This does not need to come at the expense of privacy either. With the correct features, policies and safeguards in place, camera technology can capture, analyse and report on incidents, while ensuring footage is treated with the utmost respect and discretion.
