The company used the show as an opportunity to reveal a snapshot survey of installations, and reported that 75% of UK remote CCTV installations checked had one or more issues that would impact on their operational performance.
Problems included incorrect time configuration, camera failures and hard disk issues.
16% of systems had one or more failed cameras, while 2% weren’t recording anything at all.
A further 6% of systems featured alarms that were not activating while a massive 45% fell short of the recommended minimum recording duration of 31 days.
Clearly these issues are significant and, if this snapshot survey were to be multiplied across the UK’s CCTV systems it would represent a massive potential for security breaches.
Detecing faults before problems escalate
Darren Rewston, managing director at CheckMySystems, said that it’s important for these systems to have procedures in place to detect faults “before problems escalate.”
“Modern CCTV systems are often seen as a ‘fit and forget’ solution with very few moving parts and no day-to-day interaction required,” he explained. “However, as our snapshot survey starkly illustrates, over time many CCTV systems may develop faults and issues which can have a detrimental impact on their operational effectiveness.”
According to Rewston, one answer is to adopt measures such as running automated remote health and operation monitoring software to check across a wide range of performance parameters, every hour of every day, so issues can be flagged-up and proactive remedial steps taken.
“Increasingly this is being seen as a more attractive and cost-effective prospect than simply relying on time consuming manual checks or infrequent visits to site which may result in problems being unresolved for weeks or even months.”
The CheckMySystems survey also revealed 31% of systems had inaccurate time by more than an hour making it difficult to track events that have been detected by, for instance, Automatic Number Plate Recognition, and seriously impacting on automated recording or alarm schedules.
This news comes as IMS Research have revealed that the video surveillance market worldwide is set to grow by 12% this year, underlining the importance of ensuring that expansion is not carried out without proper system checks being put in place.