Articles by Larry Anderson

If a video surveillance system is installed using public funds, should the resulting video therefore be accessible to the public? A poll in the United Kingdom suggests the majority of Britons think it should. 64 percent of 1,345 people surveyed believe that British taxpayers, who pay for cameras placed in public places, should have access to the video feeds through live web streaming. The survey was conducted by installer CCTV.co.uk. There could be advantages to providing public access to vide...

A pessimist might see the coming “Internet of Things” as the “Internet of Things that Could Go Wrong.” Clearly the networking of more machines in the home, including video and security systems, suggests that somebody (or something) needs to be available to make sure that the resulting home automation system is working as intended. If you need technical support for home automation, who do you call? It’s not just a theoretical question, given the accelerating trend...

Backscatter x-ray is a full-body scanning technology, typically used for passenger screening at airports and to detect plastic bombs and other hidden weapons. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has taken backscatter x-ray machines out of U.S. airports because of changing requirements, although they are still used internationally and at other venues, such as courthouses, prisons, etc. Controversy has plagued the devices since they were introduced in 2009, including concerns about sa...

If you had a super power, would you use it for good or evil? The question might typically be the subject of vigorous debate among third graders, but it’s also a question that comes up when you consider technology. Sometimes the benefits of technology are almost like super powers. As much as we seek to apply the powers of technology to security, there is also a criminal element that stands ready to use them with evil intent. Such is the case with drones. We have previously mentioned the po...

Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, have drawn huge national attention, and the news story has the potential to dominate headlines and stir controversy nationwide as it plays out over the next few years. Some elements here are similar to the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, a national story that grabbed headlines for years, climaxing in a televised trial and a troubling (for some) verdict that people are still talking about. The Michael Brown shooting case in Ferguson has similarities, but also...

Anixter International’s acquisition of Tri-Ed could help to accelerate implementation of IP video and access control by small and mid-sized dealer/integrators. In announcing the $420 million acquisition, Anixter emphasized the opportunity to expand its IP business through the new Tri-Ed customer base that has previously been more focused on analogue video as well as access control, intrusion detection and fire/life safety. It’s just one of the opportunities for Anixter to leverage t...

Editor's Note: HDcctv Alliance has announced that Dahua has opened its patented HDCVI technology to the global video surveillance industry as the basis for HDcctv's AT 2.0 standard. For additional elaboration on what the move means to the growing market for higher-resolution CCTV, we approached Todd Rockoff, chairman and executive director of HDcctv Alliance. SourceSecurity.com: How is HDcctv AT 2.0 superior to HD-SDI or other previous approaches? Todd Rockoff:  When i...

How much is the security risk each time an employee leaves a company? Unfortunately, many enterprises don’t manage the risk very well. Often, processes for cancelling passwords or retrieving physical assets may be slipshod, or even non-existent. Research by IS Decisions highlights the problem: Over a third (36 percent) of desk-based workers in the United States and the United Kingdom are aware of having access to a former employer’s systems or data after leaving an organisation. The...

How often is security used as a selling point? You don’t see it very often. Generally greater security is seen as a necessary evil, a corporate “cost.” Interesting, therefore, to see a company hoping that greater security can help turn around a flagging brand. In this case, security is related to identity protection, and the company is Blackberry. Blackberry recently signed an agreement to purchase Secusmart, a company that specialises in secure communication for governments,...

Highlighting China’s Video Surveillance Giants, this is the third in a series of articles on the growing international presence of China’s top three video surveillance/CCTV companies. See the other articles on Hikvsion and Dahua. Zheijiang Uniview Technologies Co., headquartered in Hangzhou, has 29 offices all over China and holds a third-place market share in the Chinese domestic market. In the security market since 2005, the company has roots in IT and telecom and has been an ind...

Highlighting China’s Video Surveillance Giants, this is the second in a series of articles on the growing international presence of China’s top three video surveillance/CCTV companies. Check out articles on Hikvision and Uniview, which are also part of the series. Dahua Technology Co., Ltd. is a Chinese video company with roughly 75 percent of its revenue coming from the huge domestic Chinese market. The rest reflects Dahua’s growing international presence in the video survei...

Highlighting China’s Video Surveillance Giants, this is the first in a series of articles on the growing international presence of China’s top three video surveillance/CCTV companies. See other articles in the series from Dahua and Uniview here and here. For three years now, Hikvision Digital Technology Co. has been ranked as the world’s largest CCTV and video surveillance equipment provider. IHS Research estimates the Chinese manufacturing giant’s global market share in...

On April 16, 2013, snipers fired for 19 minutes on PG&E Corp.'s Metcalf electric power transmission station near San Diego, California, knocking out 17 giant transformers that supply electricity to Silicon Valley. At least 100 rounds were fired from at least one high-powered rifle. The power grid was rerouted to avoid a blackout, but it took 27 days to make repairs and get the substation back up and running. The incident got the attention of regulators and security prof...

I took an extra camera with me on vacation this year. It was a tiny thermal camera that FLIR gave out at a press event earlier in the year. It’s about 2 by 3 inches or so and contains their new micro-camera thermal core. Obviously the little camera is just a way for them to demonstrate how small (and inexpensive) the new technology is. I figured a trip to the beach was a good time to try it out. The sensor in my little toy camera is the same small, inexpensive thermal camera core that ena...

A video demonstration from Axis highlights the image stabilisation capabilities of their latest network cameras. Image stabilisation isn’t new, of course, but the ability to deal with extreme situations like this results from Axis’ innovation to provide “robust, real-time image stabilisation.” The video shows a demonstration Axis presented at IFSEC. The capability is the result of the “introduction of efficient gyroscopes in combination with cutting-edge software p...

The security market it clearly sold on the value of video, but customers shouldn’t depend solely on video to protect their premises. Rather, they should implement a combination of video systems and other sensors for a more effective approach overall. That’s a message I heard when I visited the Optex booth at the IFSEC show. The supplier of many different types of sensors says a “deeper and wider” integration of video with sensors provides a higher level of security requi...

Conventional wisdom has been that analogue video has remained popular at the lower end of the security market because of the complexity of installing IP systems. The proliferation of NVR appliances, self-configuring systems and end-to-end solutions today addresses the requirements of even small systems and has overcome issues of complexity. The new systems are plug-and-play and require little expertise on the part of the installer. Ease of installation was among last obstacles to total IP adopti...

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” So said Herbert A. Simon, American Political Scientist, Economist, Sociologist, Psychologist, and Professor. I heard that quote at the Avigilon presentation at IFSEC, repeated by Ian Povey, Avigilon’s director of product marketing and product management. He used the quote to support the need for more (accurate) video analytics. In other words, without analytics, there is so much video information that the operator&rsquo...

Camera manufacturers are coming up with new ways to use the intelligence inside today’s IP cameras. We all know that cameras now have chips inside, and Moore’s Law (look it up) tells us that processing power increases every two years, which means today’s cameras should be (and indeed are) much smarter than the IP cameras of several years ago. Some of that intelligence is being used to accommodate higher resolutions in many of today’s cameras, and it is making possible mo...

The best standards are often baseline, common-denominator standards that leave room for innovation The collaboration between ONVIF and SIA to develop new access control standards is just the latest standards-related news from the Security Industry Association (SIA), the American trade association headquartered in Silver Spring, Md., near Washington, D.C.  In fact, SIA has a long history and tradition of standards development, dating back to the 1980s. SIA has produced 1...

While riding the Tube in London during IFSEC, I came across an attention-grabbing headline in a newspaper someone left in the next seat: “Coming To a Workplace Near You: RoboOfficeCop.” The article was about a robot that can patrol an office, checking that doors are shut and desks are uncluttered, using cameras and scanners to see whether anything is out of the ordinary. If something is amiss, the 6-ft-tall machine can store information to a hard drive to be reported later to a huma...

The next generation of access control standards will be developed by the recently announced collaboration between the Open Network Video Interface Forum (ONVIF) and the Security Industry Association (SIA), the American trade association headquartered in Silver Spring, Md., near Washington, D.C. Both organisations have staked a claim in the area of access control standards, and now they’re seeing their interests converge. SIA’s Open Supervised Device Protocol (OSDP) standard addresse...

The third day of a trade show is when you start feeling like Bill Murray in that movie "Ground Hog Day." It's like you're living the same day over and over -- the same waiter at breakfast, the same (or at least interchangeable) crowds on the London Underground, the same frowning man waiting to scan your badge, the same frantic search to find your badge among multiple pockets (coinciding with the same brief moment of panic). Another day, another group of suppliers to visit, and some of the theme...

I am visiting IFSEC for the first time in several years, and one revelation is how well the event reflects the increasingly global - and diverse - nature of the security market. On the second day of the show, I was struck by the diversity of attendees, apparent in the many languages you hear spoken in the exhibit hall. I also kept coming upon confirmation of the variety of global security companies from around the world who are exhibiting at the event -- another reflection of a thriving worldwid...

It took a crowded ride during rush hour on the London “Tube” to get me there, including multiple transfers, but the first day of IFSEC at its new venue, the ExCel in London, yielded a couple of newsy announcements and busy traffic at many of the stands. The industry is still reeling from bombshell news last week of the acquisition of Milestone by Canon. The ink may be barely dry, but the agreement was celebrated at IFSEC with a press event and big photo opportunity involving Rokus v...

You can depend on the National Rifle Association (NRA) to enter the conversation after almost any high-profile violent incident, and such was the case recently after a 22-year-old college student went on a deadly rampage outside the main campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Thirteen were injured and six young adults lost their lives, including the perpetrator. After the tragedy, “NRA News Commentator” Dom Raso took issue with what he called “inaccuracy of the...

Another week, another school shooting. Or so it seems recently with all the incidents in the U.S. news media. Just this week there was another one in Troutdale, Ore. In fact, the organisation Everytown for Gun Safety says there have been roughly 74 school shootings since the well-remembered tragedy in Newtown, Conn., about 18 months ago. Counting just the weeks school has been in session since then, the number is more than a shooting a week. The organization lists the shootings on their web sit...

Low-light imaging has historically been a problem for megapixel cameras. Arecont Vision, like other megapixel camera manufacturers, has struggled to solve the dilemma of low-light images, which are plagued by noise, smearing of video, high bit rates (requiring additional storage) and loss of colour. Arecont Vision says it now has the answer, dubbing it STELLAR technology. The “LL” in the middle of STELLAR stands for “low-light;” the entire acronym sta...

The security market is awash in stories about how big companies sought to step in and transform the market, from GE to Cisco to several cable or telecom companies. There is generally a lot of hand-wringing over “what it means” when you hear about a big company entering the market. So far the impact of bigger players on our status quo as a fragmented market has been minimal, but it still causes waves when a big company sets its sights on security. Such is the case with Apple, the late...

My last few airplane trips have included a fun surprise at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security screening line – I was invited to enter the TSA Pre-Check line, where you get to keep your shoes on and your laptop in your bag, among other benefits. It’s also a shorter line that goes faster. I had heard about the Pre-Check line from my neighbour, who described his complex process of applying for the perk. What I have since deduced is that the TSA has also been allo...