SecurityHive’s D2K Project presents four questions to physical security and video surveillance product manufacturers asking them how their products turn computer data into business knowledge their customers can apply to their business – to their bottom line.

Here is Viakoo’s feedback:

Question #1
Define the end-users that would be interested in your product/service and what traditional benefits they would gain from similar products/services.
There are three types of end users who are interested and use Viakoo’s SaaS solution for ensuring proper operation of security video networks:
a. Integrators: Security integrator firms benefit by knowing (ahead of their customer telling them) if there are issues in the security video network that prevents video from properly recording, and from having automated identification of where the problem is, and recommendations for how to fix it. Unlike other solutions that look only at individual devices, Viakoo looks at the entire network and finds issues that would otherwise take days or hours to find.
b. Corporate physical security teams: Viakoo benefits corporate security teams by providing detailed information on the security video network, including inventory reports, tracking of retention compliance, as well as knowing when something in the network is not working properly and how to fix it.
c. IT organizations: Because video surveillance is performed through an IP-based network, many of the issues that Viakoo identifies are traditionally handled by IT (for example, storage and switches are often the cause of security video streams not recording properly).

Question #2
Explain what business challenges your product/service solves and why end-customers would be interested.
As physical security has moved from analog to IP-based video surveillance, the number and type of issues that can prevent security video from recording properly have dramatically risen. This is because across camera devices, video management systems (VMS), switches, storage, and servers all provide higher numbers of configurations that can be used (and very few have been tested in the context of security video).
In a recent survey, Viakoo found an overwhelming number of end-customers have the issues the Viakoo solutions solves:

• 89% have found their video surveillance not working as it should
• 62% took a few days or more to find out
• 83% went to retrieve security video and found it missing
  End users would be interested in this technology for a number of reasons, chief among them:

• Maintaining a high level of physical security
• Ability to prove retention compliance (in many organizations this is a legal requirement)
• Having a dashboard of key metrics to manage to (the Viakoo service reports KPIs like video path uptime , video retention compliance , and video stream deliverability index ).
• Easily share ticket information between the physical security team and the IT team.
• Protection against cyber-attacks (devices at the edge of the network, like security video, are often targets for hackers to gain entry to the corporate network).

Question #3
Elaborate on how the end-users of your product/service will turn the usage of your product/service into actual business knowledge about their environment that would lead to a greater business understanding.
There are three ways (not exhaustive!) that show how Viakoo’s technology allows users to use information to better run their business and/or have a deeper business understanding:
a. Compliance: in many organizations there is a legal requirement to retain security video files for a period of time. If the organization is not able to produce video evidence from within that retention window they are subject to fines (civil damages can often be in the millions of dollars, because they were negligent in their responsibility).
b. Return on Assets/ROI: The deployment of a large-scale video surveillance network is a large commitment of financial resources, and a solution like Viakoo can be used to measure how well those resources are being used. For example, without Viakoo a commonly accepted “uptime” number for video surveillance is 70%; with Viakoo organizations can achieve significantly higher uptime (>99%).
c. Corporate Security (including workplace safety): Many organizations use security video footage for planning their security operations, and also for ensuring that the employees are safe. In the spirit of “garbage in/garbage out”, if the security video is not capturing video correctly (typical numbers are only 70% uptime), the analytics based on it will be incorrect (and thus potentially create hazardous situations).

Question #4
Describe the process of how the use of your product/service will help businesses turn the data gained into usable business awareness/knowledge for their own benefit.
Alerts
a. Viakoo immediately detects any issue in the security video network that would prevent proper recording of the video stream, and sends a push notification to the end-users smartphone with detailed information on what went wrong and how to fix it. That push notification can be treated as a ticket, and forwarded to others in the organization for prompt action.
Dashboards
b. Viakoo can span across multiple physical sites and locations, making it possible to report on security video operations at whatever level makes sense (e.g. specific location, site, region, national, etc.). This gives management information appropriate to their span of control.
On demand reporting of inventory/assets:
c. Viakoo’s technology includes self-discovery, meaning that without user input, the technology identifies all of the components that make up the security video network (i.e. camera devices, servers, storage, switches, etc.). In addition, within the Viakoo service that information is combined with other information (such as from the video management software) so that logical and physical descriptions can be combined to provide as rich of description as possible. When Viakoo generates an inventory report, it uniquely can describe the device, its physical location, and what other systems it is connected to. Viakoo wins high praise from customers for this capability to turn data into actionable intelligence and insights.

About Viakoo:
Viakoo is an Industrial IoT company with a focus on critical infrastructure, specifically managing collections of devices that work together to accomplish a given task. We have built an extensible cloud-based Industrial IoT framework, and have implemented our first solution for the management of customer-premises IP security video networks. Our critical infrastructure customers come from a range of industries, including ports, railways, oil & gas, retail, gaming, and education.

Viakoo offers both Services and Software, depending on what is needed by customers to solve their security video network issues. We offer:

• Remote sensing, alerting, and troubleshooting of video network disruptions
• Software as a Service to discover, map, and instrument your video network
• Dashboard status of your video network, even when it is distributed across multiple sites
• Experts in video network infrastructure, available to help your team remotely

We deliver these capabilities for most popular IP surveillance environments. Leave the disruptions, the downtime, and the “missing video” behind. We can put you on the road to achieving both your long- and short-term security goals.