It is always difficult to talk openly about security sensitive sites as the last thing we would want to do is compromise a client’s security. Hence no photographs of the site.
Water is often taken for granted by us all and so quite often are CCTV installations. Cameras are apparently installed to British Standards but, who checks?
On this particular site the cameras were purportedly installed to the British Standard. The required camera test charts, as recommended by the Home Office, were in the log book but neither pen nor pencil had been near them.
– You can be assured the installer has been paid in full for a site full of cameras but set to what standard?
– Does the installer hold the information for each of the 30 plus cameras in his head?
– How do you monitor for the inevitable camera and image degradation if no benchmark has been established?
– How is the system maintained and more to the point what is the owner paying for in terms of maintenance if all he has is a blanket comment “They’re all installed and working OK mate. The invoice is in the post!”
A holistic approach
On this particular site, new cameras were being installed by installer who take its obligations more seriously. They had asked CCTV In Focus to train one of their installation engineers in the use of ROTAKIN. The gentleman had many years of experience installing CCTV systems and after setting his cameras up to the British Standard ROTAKIN method, he said “I do not know how I ever managed before. This is such an improvement we should all be using this kit.”
After conducting a full site survey and camera audit, CCTV In Focus was able to verify that the site was now up to the required standard. Left in the hands of the original installer, this important utility would have been left wide open to all kinds of attacks.
As you can see from the above, even large organisations with huge budgets for security can still get it wrong. In the UK only 4 per cent of CCTV images comes from public space CCTV system. The rest is reliant commercial or business users. If multi-national companies looking after our national infrastructure cannot get it right, what chance has the smaller end-user.
Clients are often sold technology which is not needed to achieve their operational requirements for CCTV. Sales people, who may have limited technical knowledge of the equipment and no real understanding of the customer’s true requirements state that the system will do everything that is asked of it. This inevitably creates problems for the installer engineer when the client questions why the system does not perform as promised. This just highlights that fact that without an operational requirement what we the client is sold is not always what they expect.
The end user, whether it be local government or a small corner local shop, has been often miss-sold and miss-informed about CCTV. CCTV is too often specified and installed in the basis of how it looks like to a human eye instead of to a set of technical standards. The has resulted in millions of pounds of public and private money being spent on equipment that is either not needed or is not effective.
It is time to start looking objectively at systems to ensure that all CCTV users’ requirements are met and understand correctly. Without this the credibility of the effectiveness of CCTV will continue to suffer.
