Month: October 2020

Over the past few months, businesses of all sizes have been tasked with maintaining safe, healthy environments for staff and visitors against the backdrop of COVID-19. From educational and healthcare campuses to corporate offices and retail stores, many organizations are seeking to implement safeguards such as mandatory face masks to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Intelligent applications that can help automate compliance with new health and safety procedures are being introduced to the market, which can quickly put valuable information into the hands of facility decision makers. A new generation of video analytics, powered by artificial intelligence technology, is enabling higher levels of accuracy and speed than traditional pixel-based analytics, ensuring that organizations who depend on accurate results and high throughput can maintain the pace of their operations without having to deal with unnecessary alerts and alarms. For environments such as hospitals or healthcare organizations, where mask wearing is a critical part of a risk mitigation strategy, it’s crucial for video management systems with mask detection to operate real-time monitoring and alerting of ‘no mask’ events – making it easier to take prompt corrective action, optimize safety protocols and enhance situational awareness.   Organizations looking to audit their internal processes for improvement or regulatory compliance should also have the ability to search for ‘no mask’ events in stored video to be able to produce reports or track organizational compliance over time. Many of these functions are made easier with deep or even native integrations of video analytics into a video management system such as the new exacqVision 20.09 with face mask detection. With a seamless, cost-effective face mask detection solution, integrated from Tyco AI directly to the exacqVision VMS, this solution will continue to assist facility managers in adapting to new guidelines, and investing in cost-effective, scalable and efficient technology to help mitigate risks.      

2N’s wide range of intercoms are now available in the AXIS Camera Station video management software, allowing customers to integrate a 2N intercom into their full video surveillance solution.     2N offers a large portfolio of high-quality intercoms for secure and comfortable communication. With various models – from stylish intercoms designed to blend into residential environments to tougher intercoms made for industrial use – 2N’s intercoms are designed to be easy to install and operate, providing clear camera identification and two-way communication. Features and functions in AXIS Camera Station Upon installation, the 2N intercom will be automatically detected as a device in AXIS Camera Station and is therefore easy to add to the existing system. Operators receive instant notification of an incoming intercom call in the PC user interface or mobile app, and can then identify and talk with visitors in addition to opening the door. The intercom’s camera can also be used for traditional surveillance like any other IP camera in the system. All 2N intercoms running on firmware 2.30 can now be used in an AXIS Camera Station system. An AXIS Camera Station Core license to connect the device and a 2N enhanced video or Gold license are also needed.  

Genetec Inc., a leading technology provider of unified security, public safety, operations, and business intelligence solutions, recently announced that the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, an iconic amusement park in California, has recently upgraded its security infrastructure with the Security Center platform. By unifying video and access control park-wide, the park’s security team is able to speed up investigations and emergency response. Touted as the ‘Coney Island of the West,’ the seaside park features about 40 rides, 30 restaurants, 15 retail shops, arcades, miniature golf, bowling, and conference and banquet facilities. As an admission-free park, guests can enter through multiple entrances to buy food, purchase ride tickets, or simply walk around and enjoy the surroundings. Unlike gated parks which typically have a main security checkpoint, the park’s security team must be hyper-vigilant to spot potential security threats before they can develop. Security operators constantly monitor video cameras and work directly with field officers to handle issues. While video surveillance technology helped security teams watch over the large park, aging equipment began compromising their efficiency. As the search for a new video management system began, the team prioritized openness, reliability, and a vendor’s reputation in the market. Moreover, their aging access control system would soon need replacing too.   The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk team chose the Genetec Security Center platform because of its unique ability to unify video surveillance, access control, and other systems and sensors. The flexibility of the platform was a key selling point and enabled them to choose their preferred cameras and door hardware. Today, the team at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk uses the Security Center platform to manage over 400 cameras and 220 doors across the entire amusement park. From one single interface, operators actively monitor cameras and doors, respond to alarms, handle investigations, and export and share video evidence. This ensures that every security incident is effectively resolved without having to switch applications. “Like any busy amusement park, our guests sometimes become separated from their groups. When this happens, we are now able to use the Security Center Omnicast™ video surveillance system, along with assistance from our field officers, to quickly reunite guests with their parties,” said Will Graham, Security Technology Administrator at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. If motion is detected near a perimeter after opening hours, the platform will trigger an alarm and display live video and a 10-second replay of the event on a dispatcher’s monitor. This allows them to quickly identify if it’s an actual threat. The team has also expedited investigations by sharing system access with other departments. This includes food service, loss prevention and ticket sales who can handle their own preliminary investigations, if needed. “Using the Security Center platform, all door events are linked to video which means our team can quickly gather the information needed and solve cases faster,” said Graham. With Security Center, operators get an instant view of an event as it’s unfolding. So before sending an officer to check on the area, they can quickly identify if it’s a threat or a false alarm. Using the Synergis system, the team has set up different door schedules and rules and created over 200 cardholder groups with unique access privileges for various roles and responsibilities.Synergis system, the team has set up different door schedules and rules and created over 200 cardholder groups with unique access privileges for various roles and responsibilities. For added peace-of-mind, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk team receives fully managed software maintenance and monitoring via the Genetec Advantage maintenance package to help ensure their systems always available and up to date.     “Using Security Center has definitely heightened our response efficiency at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Everything from video surveillance and access control to alarm management has been consolidated into one solution – it’s just a better, more effective way to work. We’re confident that with this unified platform, we’ll be keeping our guests happy and safe well into the future,” concluded Graham.  

Genomics England has recently expanded their Quantum ActiveScale object storage solution as part of an integrated environment designed to store, protect and provide access to hundreds of petabytes of genomic data. The solution enabled the organization to scale up from sequencing 100,000 genomes to millions while improving data resilience, controlling costs, and avoiding IT complexity. The implementation supports Genomics England’s commitment to sequence the genomes of intensive care patients with COVID-19 and other people with the virus, and is an example of Quantum’s leadership in storing and managing unstructured data. Expanding Genomic work beyond the limits of an existing NAS system Genomics England was established in 2013 by the UK’s Department of Health & Social Care to support the 100,000 Genomes Project – a ground-breaking effort to sequence whole genomes from a vast number of patients with rare diseases and common cancers. In 2018, the project was significantly expanded. The new goal was to sequence up to five million genomes over five years. Unfortunately, the existing network-attached storage (NAS) system used for genomic data was not up to the task. The NAS, which held 21 PB of data, had reached its node-scaling limit. Genomics England needed something more scalable than existing NAS solutions – an infrastructure that could grow to hundreds of petabytes. A new solution also had to facilitate simple, flexible access to data by more than 3,000 researchers around the world. Selecting Quantum ActiveScale object storage as part of a single, integrated solution To explore new storage solutions, Genomics England consulted with Nephos Technologies, an independent UK-based data services organization, to design and implement a new storage solution. After evaluating several possibilities, the Nephos team designed a multi-faceted solution that incorporates a high-performance parallel file system from WekaIO, Mellanox® high-speed networking, and Quantum ActiveScale object storage. The solution creates a two-tier architecture that combines flash storage plus an object storage system, which serves as a long-term data lake repository. The two storage tiers – each of which can be scaled independently – present as a single hybrid storage environment. As a result, researchers have the flexibility to query data in a highly randomized fashion. Taking on new challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic Within a few years of deploying the new storage environment, Genomics England needed to expand again. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 presented new, urgent challenges for the global medical-scientific community, and Genomics England was in a prime position to help better understand who is susceptible to the virus. The organization committed to sequencing the genomes of up to 20,000 intensive care patients with COVID-19 plus up to 15,000 people with the virus who are experiencing only mild symptoms. Around the same time that Genomics England was ramping up participation in COVID-19 research, the ActiveScale solution platform was acquired by Quantum. A Quantum team facilitated a smooth transition for Genomics England, which then expanded the object-storage environment from 40PB to more than 100PB. Scaling was seamless. The ActiveScale system’s architecture is underpinned by its RAID replacement technology, with intelligent, dynamic placement of erasure coded data. That placement of data eliminates the need for system rebalancing which can compromise performance and availability. Protecting vital Genomic data   ActiveScale object storage protects data and provides the resiliency that Genomics England needs for its critical work. The organization takes advantage of the geo-distributed capability of ActiveScale, an added strength of Quantum’s RAID replacement technology that spreads data and parity across multiple nodes in the storage grid. With ActiveScale object storage, the organization distributes data across three data centers, for full data protection against a major disaster such as site-loss. Data can continue to be accessed for reading and writing at the remaining sites and withstand additional hardware failures offering 19x9s data durability.   Gaining scalability while controlling costs and complexity With ActiveScale object storage, Genomics England no longer faces the capacity limits of its previous NAS solution. The organization has been able to expand its object storage to support more genomic analysis and even take on additional COVID-19 work without a major overhaul. In the future, Genomics England can easily integrate ActiveScale object storage with the Amazon S3-compliant public cloud environments for additional protection and scaling flexibility. The storage environment is also helping to reduce costs. According to Nephos, the Genomics England team decreased storage costs by 75 percent per genome compared with the previous environment. The organization is expected to reduce costs by 96 percent by 2023. Just as important, the Genomics England team has experienced these benefits without adding complexity. The new integrated storage environment makes it simple for researchers from around the world to store and access the genomic data they need for their work.  

  PMT Security recently deployed an advanced facial recognition (FR) solution and network of advanced IP cameras at a busy shopping centre in Sydney. The customer The shopping centre is a modern, medium-sized retail precinct, based in Western Sydney. It contains a Big W and a Woolworths as well as more than 50 specialty stores. The site also hosts several heritage-listed cottages, some of which date back to the1860s. The security mission at the centre is sensitive, due to the diverse nature of the buildings and a mixed demographic. The challenge The retail destination had been experiencing antisocial behaviour from a small group of repeat offenders, and frequently worked with police to remove them from the premises. Trespassing outside of retail hours was a big issue for the shopping centre, and several known drug offenders were evicted on a regular basis. Antisocial behaviour included individuals who frequently became a public nuisance by entering the centre whilst under the influence of illicit substances, shoplifting and disturbing the peace. “We could only use footage from our network of cameras to find these individuals after the event, which was time-consuming. Trespassing in particular was a real problem for a while, it was happening almost every day,” reported a spokesperson at the facility, “The shopping centre required a solution that would help them recognise individuals who were known to have transgressed in the past, and alert staff and authorities that they had entered the premises despite being banned. “We needed a more sophisticated system that could help us single out these individuals before they become a problem, and enable us to be proactive about clamping down on antisocial behaviour before it deterred our loyal customers.” The PMT Solution Management approached security service providers PMT Security about a holistic, best-of-breed solution. “We needed something that went beyond the footage provided by our network of analogue security cameras and the people sitting behind them watching monitors all day. The retail centre is a real destination for local shoppers who come for the diverse speciality stores, big retail and food chains and a wide variety of excellent cafes. We needed to create a safe environment that made our customers feel secure, so it was essential that we introduced cutting-edge technology to help us achieve that,” said the spokesperson. PMT Security worked with world-leading vendors to create a complete solution, which now enables this shopping centre to be proactive about security. At the centre of the technology stack, an open-platform video management software (VMS) solution from Milestone Systems powers a network of IP cameras, encoders and digital video recorders. One such integration is the shopping centre’s facial recognition (FR) solution, powered by VixVizion’s Imagus software. The FR solution allows security administrators to automate parts of the monitoring process, by setting alerts and profiles on the system for certain individuals. The FR solution will recognise these people as they enter the store, pulling up a record of their misdemeanours, and automatically alert security personnel. Further to this, the Imagus system also recognises and tracks their associates, to add a further layer of security to the network. “The Imagus FR solution uses Artificial Intelligence to pick out an individual in a crowded centre, then learn who they are known to enter the shops with. That way we are able to keep track of not just a noted person on the banned list, but any people that they associate with upon entering the premises, so we are able to stamp out further bad behaviour before it becomes a problem for our shoppers,” added their security manager. Fraser Larcombe of VixVizion explains further, “Facial Recognition technology can add benefits to security by not just identifying criminals, but also giving users the ability to look for unknown associates of that criminal, and finding people that may have been involved but weren’t originally known to the user. It empowers users to find links between suspected individuals and follow certain behaviours on a whole new level of investigation.”     “Deployments like this are at the very forefront of today’s video technology, but also opens up the possibility of more complementary technologies being added in the future. An open platform allows for a huge amount of functionality to be built into a security solution, and as we see in this case, essentially future-proofs the premises and the business. They can add the latest technologies as they become available and therefore continue to offer their customers the very best retail experience moving forward,” said Brett Hansen, Country Manager, Milestone Systems.   Larcombe from VixVizion went on to add, “Facial ‘verification’ can also help customers in say, a retail environment, by recognising a VIP shopper and creating a seamless experience. Imagine walking into your local retail bank branch to discuss a loan and finding all the paperwork ready for you at the desk, or walking into a coffee shop and using your face to get your regular order, with no waiting in line.” Managers also cited the ease-of-use as a big factor that is making life easier at the shopping centre. They said, “We have got a lot more cameras than we did before, they are placed all around the centre now which is much better than it was before. However, despite having more devices with more data being recorded, it is actually quicker and easier to monitor and administer the cameras than it was previously. We can put say, four or five cameras on the one save rather than doing each one individually, and we can now just put the times in, export the files and we are done. It really is easy – honestly, you could train a monkey to do it.” Return on investment The PMT Security solution has enabled the shopping centre’s security team to curb offensive behaviour and trespassing, making the security mission much more effective while saving the team a lot of time that was previously spent monitoring screens and manually inputting data. The number of individuals attempting to trespass…