Trash Teaches Us A Lesson

What if you came into work one morning to find rotting garbage strewn about your cubicle? You may be angered and possibly confused, but you would certainly want to find the perpetrator, especially after spending hours cleaning up the mess. 

What if this continued on? Do you have the time in your work schedule to keep dealing with this madness? George Schaaf didn’t. 

Schaaf is the park and landscape superintendent for the city of Juneau, Alaska and the Juneau Empire recalls his story of how he turned to video technology to catch litterers who were trash dumping — including deer carcasses, live clams, tires, refrigerators and sofas—on the park grounds. What’s more, the entirely gross situation also turns out to be quite expensive. Schaaf estimates the city spends $10,000 a year in cleaning up and removing the garbage in staff time, equipment and dumping fees.

To catch the litterers, Schaaf installed handheld video recorders in areas of the park and has already issued several tickets on the back of the video evidence. 

But how did Schaaf keep the process of reviewing video from becoming too much of a time investment? After all, there are only so many hours in the day, which Schaaf pointedly summed up in his interview: ‘We all have a lot better things to do than to sit and look at all the hours of footage that actually come through."

Schaaf limited his team’s time investment by only reviewing video footage when incidents occurred. And while the Juneau team’s approach to reducing their time investment was more low-tech, it does hit on a core need of many investigators today, regardless of the caliber of their technology: the need to reduce investigation time.  

Intelligent video technology is taking this a step further, freeing security professionals from the task of rewinding and fast-forwarding through endless footage to find a few minutes of recording. Instead they can leverage technology to search through their video feed (also known as forensic search) for specific information, much like searching the Internet for a single search term. Now, what would have taken hours upon hours of sifting through footage back in the day only takes seconds, helping investigators reduce their investigation time and do more with their time.

Bottom line, Schaaf had the right idea of catching the litterers by reducing the time that he and his team had to monitor their feeds. Forensic search capabilities takes this idea one step further, saving even more time by letting investigators quickly find the actionable footage they need without wasting your time.

For an example of forensic search in action, check out our blog on 3VR customer Denali Alaskan Federal Credit Union. 

Hackers vs. IP Video Surveillance Systems Part II

A 2011 study from the Urban Institute found that surveillance cameras can be a powerful crime deterrent, but their efficacy is largely dependent on how the surveillance system is set up and monitored.

And what if the wrong person is monitoring a system? Wired’s Threat Report reported last week on new research indicating that several popular surveillance cameras are open to hackers. Wired’s Kim Zetter writes:

Three of the most popular brands of closed-circuit surveillance cameras are sold with remote internet access enabled by default, and with weak password security — a classic recipe for security failure that could allow hackers to remotely tap into the video feeds, according to new research.  

The cameras, used by banks, retailers, hotels, hospitals and corporations, are often configured insecurely — thanks to these manufacturer default settings, according to researcher Justin Cacak, senior security engineer at Gotham Digital Science. As a result, he says, attackers can seize control of the systems to view live footage, archived footage or control the direction and zoom of cameras that are adjustable. 

It’s true that the first line of defense is often at the camera level. But hacking is a complex and perennial challenge, and security vendors and businesses alike are also focused on making sure other protections – on a company’s IT network and at the appliance level.  

Interestingly how a business tackles security and who tackles it (the IT department or the security department) largely depends on whether a business’ network is closed or open. Healthcare providers, for example, tend to use open network systems in which each camera has a dedicated IP address. In this case, the open network is just that – open to the outside world, which means that the IT department takes the lead in securing the entire network. But in a closed network, such as those often deployed in casinos, it’s still possible to hack in but because it’s not tied to the rest of IT systems, the security team often takes the lead, relying as well on the built-in protections in the DVR devices on site.

Our last blog on hacking has more on the key features we’ve built into our Video Intelligence Platform to prevent external attacks including an embedded operating system, a firewall, and proprietary protocols.

Are you a security influencer?

There’s a new type of security officer in the security industry: the security “influencer.”

These officers are “confident and capable” and are doing more than battling security risks, explains a new report from IBM’s Center for Applied Insights.

Thanks to security technology, security executives are shifting from security technicians to higher-level strategic managers, according to an analysis of the report by Sci-Tech Today. 

To compile the report, IBM surveyed 138 security leaders and found that most security “influencers” automated routine processes so that they could focus more time on innovation and improving their enterprise, not only for security purposes but driving decision making for the business. 

In fact, security professionals are becoming aligned with business goals so much so that two-thirds of the security leaders surveyed expect their budgets to increase over the next two years—90 percent anticipate double-digit growth—to protect information, manage potential risks and for the incorporation of new technology. 

One respondent who is a director of line-of-business in banking said:

Security leaders are going to become more key to their organizations, their budgets will increase and they will move from the fringe to being embedded. 

Click here to see how video analytics can give security a business voice.

Identity Thieves Who Target the Dead: How Video Intelligence Can Help

Anyone who has ever been a victim of identity theft knows how frustrating and painful the experience can be. In fact the Department of Justice warns that “criminal identity theft is usually not discovered until the victim: 

• Fails a criminal background check; 
• Cannot renew his or her driver’s license; 
• Receives notice of outstanding citations or warrants; or 
• Is arrested"

Talk about a rude awakening. Unfortunately identity theft is widespread in the United States; according to The New York Times, the Justice Department estimated that identity theft cost households a total of $13.3 billion in 2010 in direct financial losses.

But what happens if you can’t defend yourself from identity theft… because you’re dead?  According to a new report from ID Analytics, the identity of nearly 2.5 million dead Americans are used to apply for credit products and services annually.

Although ID Analytics' chief technology officer Stephen Coggeshall recommends that survivors be vigilant to make sure thieves aren’t using the identity of the deceased, businesses should also be taking security steps to help protect customers – both passed away and living – from identity theft. 

Effective video security and technologies like facial indexing are one way that businesses can fight fraud like identity theft. Reuters ran an article last year on 3VR customer Members 1^st Credit Union, which has used facial indexing technology to prevent fraud. In one instance, the Member’s 1st team was able to identify a fictitious driver’s license using facial indexing and quickly turn in the information in to law enforcement.

Check out more here on how video intelligence can help fight fraud. 

Picasso theft prompts security re-evaluation

A Pablo Picasso painting and other works were stolen from Athens’ National Gallery earlier this year, the AFP reported—an estimated $7 million dollars worth of national treasures taken in just seven minutes. 

Greece’s Public Service Inspector General’s Office blames the gallery’s security, or lack there of, for the heist. Untrained guards, faulty equipment and “disastrous communications” left the gallery vulnerable, its report said.

It had been more than a decade since the National Gallery’s security procedures or equipment had been updated and the report brings attention to a number of security breakdowns, according to Auction Central News:

1. Several areas of the museum were out of range of security cameras
2. Even if there were an adequate number of cameras, their tapes had not been changed due to lack of funding
3. The museum’s alarms were prone to ring, either as false alarms or due to dead batteries
4. The security guards had no means to communicate with one another other than their personal cellphones

The saddest part of this story is that it was preventable. We know there are advanced video technologies that could have proactively alerted security the second the painting came off the wall.  

Sensors could have been used to track the painting as it crossed specific thresholds within the museum and IP cameras and DVRs would have assured the museum that the theft was recorded.

Unfortunately, this type of story is not an anomaly. It occurs every day and the excuse is always the cost of a security system.

While the euro zone struggles to make a recovery from the recession of deepening fiscal problems, high unemployment levels and rounds of salary and pension cuts in Greece, we can assure you that the security solution for Athens’ National Gallery would have been a lot less than $7 million.  

Is this just another case of being pennywise and drachma foolish?