A surprisingly large number of surveillance camera systems fail. The reasons are never too difficult to find - just look to the network and video storage systems.
Video Surveillance Systems aren’t cheap. They’re useful as deterrents or investigative tools and they make people feel safe, but they’re not cheap. Are they cheaper than keeping an entire extra staff on hand to keep eyeballs on the same scenes? Yes. But, well, to harp a bit more, they’re not cheap.
You have to purchase the cameras, the wiring/cabling, the software, the licenses, the electrical hookups, the electrician to wire those, the camera installer to physically put the camera in place, the Cat-5 or 6 to get the video back to the switch. Oh, that’s right, the switches have to be bought, and they better be capable of serious multicast. You might need PoE (power over Ethernet) switches, and wiring and cabling for those, as well as secure housings/racks. Then the cabling to the servers and SAN. Yeah, that’s right, SAN.
I once had to move 30 days of video for a small casino. Not Vegas, a little Native American casino in the middle of Oklahoma, if I remember correctly. Couple hundred cameras, running under the National Indian Gaming Committee rules. 4CIF, 30 Frames/second for cash, 2CIF, 15 frames for non-cash areas. It took over 140 Terabytes of storage to hold their video. That is a non-trivial SAN. If your building or facility is doing lots of megapixel cameras, then even with H.264 encoding, you’re using a large amount of storage.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the maintenance and care needs of a network and SAN systems. Now imagine it being installed and never touched again. Ever. That’s the problem with most Physical Security installations. The mindset is, “I buy it, problem solved. Why touch it again?”
With that said, it didn’t surprise me in the slightest to read that approximately 65-70% of all City of Philadelphia Video Surveillance cameras weren’t working. I have no information as to the root cause, but I can give you a list of suspects.
- Switches turned off or unplugged.
- Cameras misconfigured.
- SAN problems – Storage array loses 2 disks, storage overrun with video with no scheduled deletes, etc.
- Servers rebooted cold, with no one knowing how to fix any problems, and no one willing to pay for a service call.
I have personally seen all of these issues. Philadelphia is on track to have 90% of the cameras back online in a few months. Sounds like the uproar shook loose some money for a service call.
- Make sure your physical security plans include a funded maintenance plan.
- Keep lists of emergency contacts for your access control and video surveillance systems in your DR documents.
- And for the love of (insert deity), work with your physical security department to make sure you know what’s getting installed, and how much space they’ll need in the server room, the SAN, and the wiring closets.
There’s more, but I’m laughing too hard with the memories to write them. If anyone is interested, I’m happy to discuss.
