If you’ve ever been involved in the technology business, even just as a casual observer, you’ll know that innovation is often the unintended consequence of developments in other, seemingly, unrelated, areas. Google, for example, simply wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the Internet or the need for an efficient search engine to navigate the ever-burgeoning world-wide web. Similarly, the dragging of CCTV into the 21st century looks set to become the unrelated consequence of the cloud, a technology, in turn, spawned by our never-ending love affair with everything mobile.
Domino effects
There’s no getting away from it, the Internet has touched and transformed virtually every part of our modern lives. However, it’s far from static or complete – it grows, it develops and changes. As witnessed in the last few years by the ready availability of mobile Internet access using smartphones and tablets, enabling us to both work and play wherever we want, whenever we want.
By itself, however, the ability to stay connected to the web isn’t enough – we also need to be able to access shared data, connect to our inboxes and calendars, communicate with colleagues and so on. A need that is increasingly being met, not by conventional (and let’s face it – complicated) VPN tunneling to private networks, but through the cloud.
The cloud and the services it hosts are transforming the way we work, making it much easier to stay in touch as well as connected and do real work on the move. It also helps keep us and our data secure without the need for complex security measures which, when applied using conventional VPN technologies, can discourage the use of the very resources they are designed to protect.
And so to CCTV
So what’s this all got to do with CCTV? To answer that let’s start with the acronym – CCTV, or Closed Circuit TV – which, by its very nature implies limits on what the technology can do.
It’s “closed” so, for example, you can’t get at what’s being captured remotely, at least not without a lot of highly technical and expensive add-ons. And that means it just doesn’t fit in a world where we routinely expect to be able to do almost everything, from turning down the heating to checking what’s in the fridge, from our mobiles.
“But wait” I hear you cry, “IP technology can fix that, can’t it?”
Well, yes and no. IP cameras by themselves are no more accessible than their analogue counterparts. They simply digitize the analogue video streams and transmit them over an IP network, again, requiring expensive and complicated gateways to provide for remote access.
More than that, IP cameras can unintentionally take the “Closed” out of CCTV, with serious implications when it comes to security.
Get your network security measures wrong by mis-coding a firewall rule or forgetting to change the default password and, in theory, anyone could access not just your IP cameras, but the network video recorders and monitoring systems to which they connect.
Yes – that’s right – unless you expressly make it your goal to prevent unauthorized access to an IP surveillance system, anyone could find it, watch it and, even, interfere with it. Add to that the fact that you need to be a rocket scientist to install and manage an IP surveillance system at all and you start to understand why analogue CCTV still reigns supreme in the security market.
With the advent of the cloud, however, that really does look set to change.
Surveillance from the cloud
The cloud is the final piece of the jigsaw, and it changes everything. Connect cameras to a hosted surveillance system like Cloudview for example, and you can take full advantage of what IP technology has to offer, not least by making it easy to access the system remotely without the need for complicated security measures.
All you need is a browser and an Internet connection and you can check up on what’s happening from a smartphone, tablet or laptop. More than that, with the Cloudview Visual Network Adapter (VNA) you can connect both analogue and, soon, digital IP cameras to the cloud without the need for a costly and complicated local network infrastructure. You don’t even need wires as it can all be done over WiFi or a 3G mobile network.
And lastly, with security handled professionally as part of the hosted surveillance service the cloud also puts the “Closed” back into CCTV, insuring that your data can only be accessed by people authorized to see it.
You might want to think of it as Cloud Circuit TV but, whatever the name, it’s set to change the face of surveillance and, finally, bring it into our mobile 21st Century world.
source: http://www.surveillance-magazine.com/2015/07/28/cloud-circuit-tv-whod-thought/
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