Adam Lowenstein, Americas Product Director at i-PRO Americas speaks to SJA about being at the forefront of edge technology.

Can you tell our readers about yourself?

I started in this industry in 2008 and began in electronics, working for a wholesale security distributor.

At that time, we were just finishing the analog to digital transition, so it was an interesting time to join.

It’s been a wonderful ride since then and I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with management, purchasing and procurement, business development and sales, and now I’m working as i-PRO Americas Product Director, where it’s great to be influencing the product direction for our company here in the Americas.

How do you define edge technology?

Edge technology is, essentially, focused on outcomes.

Edge technology allows us to push processing to the camera, enabling the industry to get results from analytics more rapidly.

This lessens the load on a server and network and helps to create improved accuracy from the advanced analytics that come from technologies like AI.

In the security industry, AI and object detection have become powerful tools, but technological progress is allowing these to improve even further, meaning that the number of missed alarms is going down.

At the moment, we’re seeing non-smart cameras being replaced with smart cameras.

So, one of the biggest challenges for end users is to decide whether to rip-and-replace their current technologies or to gradually transition and deploy newer technologies.

To me, if a customer has made a heavy investment in their infrastructure in the last few years, then we have to try and help them maintain and achieve the ROI they originally targeted.

There are technologies that will allow them to upgrade their current infrastructure, by adding edge processing from a server standpoint.

Ultimately, today’s cameras are generating so much data that by having that processing power at the edge, we can detect objects and make decisions more quickly while avoiding having to rip-and-replace.  

What is an example of using edge technology?

Edge technology has many uses for the security industry.

One example is automatic license plate recognition (LPR).

If an end user is trying to identify a specific license plate from a particular vehicle, they want to be able to recognize this as quickly as possible.

When an ALPR analytic is loaded at the edge, we’re leveraging the power of the edge on the camera and we have the ability to rapidly and accurately capture that license plate information to take action with it.

Once that information is received from the camera, it can be analyzed against a database and if it is flagged then law enforcement can be notified.

While there are a lot of benefits for security, the advantages of the edge also go far beyond this sector.

For example, you can take some of the analytic data that edge technology provides and use that for occupancy information, to understand how many people are in a facility.

The power of the edge means that we’re not sending that data off to the cloud for it to be sent back a few minutes later, it’s instantaneous.

How does i-PRO support the development of edge technology?

At i-PRO, we’re very proud of our partnership with Ambarella, which provides the chip used in all of our cameras.

That’s what gives i-PRO its power when we talk about processing at the edge.

When i-PRO started as a company after separating from Panasonic in 2019, we made an investment into our product portfolio and what we saw from this was a significant level of innovation in our products.

We released over 190 products in the first four years as a new company, so we’ve clearly defined that we are a global leader in this market.

As we continue to push forward and innovate, we’ve strengthened our portfolio significantly, and we’re going to continue to push forward for the next 20, 30, 40 years as a company.

What do you suggest end users look out for in a vendor?

One of the main questions end users need to be asking of a potential edge technology vendor is absolutely about their cybersecurity.

Edge technology represents many benefits, but it also creates opportunities for bad actors to exploit vulnerabilities.

It’s something that we’re paying attention to very closely at i-PRO.

So much of our innovation is focused on cybersecurity and continually trying to improve that.

That includes FIPS improvements, where we have progressed from FIPS 140-2 to FIPS 140-3.

Here at i-PRO, we don’t charge our customers extra for the cybersecurity of their products because we believe that is a minimum requirement in today’s world.

Another aspect that end users need to think about is compliance.

We’ve made it our mantra that the data we’re helping our clients capture is anonymous.

It’s only concentrated on the outcome, what types of actions can we take.

Finally, end users need to ask about the focus of the technology and the direction that a potential vendor is headed.

For i-PRO, we also highlight Ambarella and their future roadmap.

Their latest chipsets are advancing technology to a really high level, whether it’s image improvement, lower bandwidth or better machine learning algorithms.

There’s so much capability at present and this is only going to get better.

How will edge technology grow and develop in the future?

The one thing that everyone should continue to remember is that an open platform is the very best situation for a client and for a customer.

Being able to add and remove building blocks to an environment or to your security system is going to offer you the most benefits.

End users should be very careful when it comes to proprietary solutions, because they may not be able to adopt a new feature or achieve that latest version of cybersecurity until that proprietary solution is ready to do so.

In contrast, an open platform environment, which is so key to i-PRO, offers that flexibility.

I really encourage everyone to be looking at open platform environments as much as possible.

What is one key takeaway you’d like people to know?

The future of edge technology doesn’t stop here.

We’re going to continue to push forward and we’re going to continue to do things beyond analytics at the edge.

For example, we are constantly looking at how we can increase image quality, improve low light sensing of video and stay in color as long as possible before going to black and white, plus more.

We know we can get so much more data and provide the security industry and many other markets with key information that can help in so many ways.

I’m really excited about what the future holds and as i-PRO continues to adopt the latest generation of Ambarella chipsets, it will allow us to capture the latest functionalities and provide end users with the best technology.

This article was originally published in the September edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.

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