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John Kingsley-Hefty on Video Surveillance

Security Counsel Architect John Kingsley-Hefty, formerly of the Corporate Security Services Department at 3M, answers readers' questions about video surveillance.

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your system around your required video storage retention schedule. To ensure that tapes are rerecorded according to the proper sequence and schedule, shuttling tapes per day or week to a separate secure areaor in some cases, offsiteworks well. Q: I see organizations converging their physical and information security departments. Do you see the departments sharing alerting and monitoring resources? A: Sharing resources is possible. The key would be the human resource standard required, followed by the training, orientation and procedures to support this integrated service. I see this question as a definite trend; all organizations are looking for efficiencies and staff reductions. This will definitely affect the guard services industry in terms of the types of officers required.Q: Our video equipment is old. Can you make any recommendations for a system that won't bankrupt us and will give us 90 days of storage?A: This is a loaded question, as we need to define the quality of the video to be recorded in terms of frames per second, the number of sites included in the system and how that calculates with the overall data-storage space required to retain a 90-day schedule. With a digital system, you will have the ability to store locally and offsite. Most companies prefer to store locally. If the camera views may be configured to take advantage of video motion detection, motion activated activity is very effective in reducing the volume of video needed for retention. This significantly reduces the storage capacity requirements, which will reduce the costs for the retention portion of the system. Again storage may be local or in combination with offsite servers and services. The key is optimizing the volume required for retention.