Verkada, a provider of cloud-managed enterprise building security and management, has announced the newest addition to its product line, Verkada Intercom and a range of updates that expand the reach of the company’s platform.

“Each of our products is intuitive and powerful in its own right – but connected together on the Command platform, they provide best-in-class capabilities to protect people and places,” said Brandon Davito, Vice President of Product at Verkada.

“All of the new products and features we’re introducing today – from Verkada Intercom and our new talkdown speaker to our enhanced Command interface – work together to empower our customers to not only keep their organizations safer, but also to transform the way they operate.”

According to the company, the new Verkada Intercom empowers front desk staff to make smarter entry decisions. With the new video intercom, customers can answer calls from anywhere with sharp video, clear audio, four smart receiver methods and intuitive management and security tools in Verkada Command.

Every button press and intercom call is recorded on-device for easy retrieval and historical review for up to 30 days and comes with the full suite of features that the company’s customers already use, including people analytics, motion algorithms and cloud archiving.

The second generation of Verkada’s bullet cameras deliver better image quality, improved analytics and an easier installation experience. The bullet cameras are designed to capture video in harsh conditions and for distant scenes. With two wide-angle models and two telephoto models, the refreshed bullet cameras have up to three times optical zoom and enhanced processing power.

With its Enhanced License Plate Recognition (LPR) capabilities, Verkada can now support LPR across three lanes of traffic with a single camera at speeds up to 80mph.

Verkada also introduced a completely new cross-camera LPR search experience where customers can see all plates that have been detected, assign names to a license plate for easier searches and review historical footage, conduct motion searches and create archives.

Helix, the powerful new enterprise video search and integration engine allows customers to provide context to their video security footage by indexing Verkada camera footage with data from third-party applications. When customers import their own enterprise data into Command – such as transactions from a point-of-sale system – they can use it as a filter to quickly search through events on video. Helix is compatible with all camera models and can be easily set up via Verkada’s public API endpoint.

Verkada also introduced the new Horn Speaker. which allows organizations to talk down to intruders directly from a camera feed in Verkada’s Command dashboard or mobile app. With the addition of an Alarms License, organizations can also have professional monitoring agents talk down to intruders, or configure a pre-recorded message to play as an automated response.

Additionally, Verkada has updated its user interface to make it easier to manage all users, devices and alerts across the Command platform. This new look and feel will better accommodate its growing portfolio of integrated security products, and ensure the platform continues to be intuitive and easy for customers to navigate. Further, new language options – French, Spanish and Japanese – were added to meet the needs of a growing global customer base.

Several new features have also been introduced to give customers more visibility and control:

• Live Viewers: For more visibility into how Verkada is being used across organizations, Live Viewers displays each person currently viewing a camera in the top right hand corner of the Camera page. The clickable Live Viewer icons will show additional context like the viewer’s name, email and IP address, and length of the stream session.
• Customizable privacy and security disclosures: Customizable QR codes and associated webpages have been created so visitors can easily understand what physical security technologies are being deployed at an organization – and how they are being used. Once the disclosure is generated, it can be shared in the form of a link embedded in an email or printed as a QR code and posted on the premises. This allows individuals entering a Verkada building to scan the QR code and quickly learn, for example, if video is being captured by cameras on the premises.

Lastly, by integrating with Checkr, Verkada Guest customers can now more quickly, accurately and securely manage visitor access with background checks, as well as registered sex offender checks, during check-in. Potential matches are returned for front desk staff to review before making entry decisions. Individuals who do not pass the screening can be immediately added to an auto-deny list.