Going Shopping? Cisco Could Be Watching You

Cisco ups its game in IP Video Surveillance

Ahhhh, Physical Security! It usually constitutes one of the major weak links in IT security's armor. All you have to do is look at the demand for Network Access Control (NAC) to be convinced. Most don't realize that Cisco has been in the physical security business for a while now, mostly in the IP Video Surveillance (IPVS) sector. Cisco sells HD IP Video Cameras, Video management systems, DVRs, and all the other pieces to complete a full IP Video Surveillance Solution.
All sorts of cool analytics, trip wires, trending, and targeting can be done with their IPVS solution. Here are some of the coolest IPVS uses I came across:

Retail Analytics – Imagine running a retail company and you're trying to figure out how to increase your customer intimacy and sales in your stores while at the same time creating a better customer experience. A tall task for sure. You would like to know how to decrease checkout lines, increase the amount of times customers receive direct engagement from a sales associate, decrease theft, maximize the efficiency of your store workforce. Seemingly simply things like scheduling employee breaks so there is always a backfill working in the dept. How about wanting to know when a customer has been waiting in a dept for help to long even though an employee on the floor is available. If you could have the employee engage the customer your chances of making a sale and customer satisfaction go up.

Cisco paired up with SCOPIX to deliver an IPVS solution to solve the above issues to Cabela's retail stores across the nation. If you're a sportsman I'm sure you've heard of, and crave for, Cabela's gear. I know I do. Anyway, the Cisco plus SCOPIX (for retail analytics) solution was able to tell Cabela's how many customers where going un-helped by a sales associate and what departments it was occurring the most. It alerted them to how long (or short) checkout lines were during certain parts of the day so schedule changes could be made appropriately.

How is this done you ask? Well the IPVS system is smart enough to tell the difference between an employee and a customer in a video stream. It uses all sorts of criteria to sort this out. It is also smart enough to be able to count people in a video surveillance area. It can track and record common traffic patterns throughout the store, tell when a customer is waiting and probably needs sales assistance. Management can set metrics within the analytics software so that they are alerted when thresholds are exceeded. For example, alert when over 50% of customers in the shoe department have to wait more than 3 minutes for a sales associate. Or the checkout line wait exceeded more than 5 minutes on average over the last week. The next step in the solution would be to alert management or employees so they can assist the waiting customers. SCOPIX has even created an iPhone application that shows the Analytics dashboard so management can get a look at which stores are meeting their metrics and which are not.

Perhaps the coolest feature is that the Analytics software will store video snapshots along with the information archive. If needed, this can be used as proof to backup the system data if you receive push back that the data just can't be correct. For example, a time stamped video snapshot showing 5 people waiting in the shoe dept. while also showing 2 available sales associates in a different dept. The multiple occurrences of this trend over a week period being reported by the SCOPIX system, plus the video snapshots, can be used to realign sales associate dept coverage.

Pretty neat stuff! I've also heard rumors that the system is specially tuned to alert all employees to respond to help a customer that is jumping up and down flapping their arms like a chicken at any camera. Rumor has it the jumping and flapping needs to be done extremely rapidly to trip the system. Let me know if it works or not will ya? ☺
Now that HD quality 1080p video surveillance cameras are available I'll bet the next advancement will be to count the number of smiles on customer faces as they walk out the door.

Cisco, SCOPIX and Cabela's news brief:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod_011209.html

For more on Cisco's IPVS see here
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6712/index.html
http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/ps/index.html

Cisco and Pelco Join Forces to make better IP cameras, News brief:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod_092109.html

The opinions and information presented here are my PERSONAL views and not those of my employer. I am in no way an official spokesperson for my employer.

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Go to Jamey’s Blog for more articles on security.

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