BCD examines the errors that most small business and retail owners make with their surveillance systems.
When it comes down to it, every retail business needs reliable physical security measures in place.
Whether your facility requires four or 4,000 cameras, the myriad threats to employees, customers and assets alike create an unignorable need for video surveillance infrastructure.
Addressing that need, however, doesn’t end with installing security cameras.
Building a robust security system requires integrating high-performing, purpose-built hardware from the front to the back end.
This includes top-of-the-line security cameras, but more importantly, it means impregnable video storage.
This holistic approach to video surveillance solution design applies to large and small retail deployments alike, as the importance of purpose-built video storage is relevant across the board.
Without strategically designed storage architecture, surveillance deployments of all sizes cannot function properly.
Without the right storage framework, security officers often experience latency and dropped frames from their video surveillance solutions.
When video is lost, analytics do not perform, which hinders the delivery of real-time intelligence – on an even simpler level, if any video footage of an incident is corrupted, prosecution of a crime is immeasurably complicated.
Poor storage infrastructure design also causes security professionals to encounter high capital expenditures and operations expenses down the road, regardless of the size of their deployment, as anytime they need to add additional storage to support more 4K surveillance cameras, video analytic applications or increased retention times, the inflexibility of traditional video storage servers would require they scale imprecisely, thereby wasting resources.
To mitigate these pain points, customers should avoid mistakes retail and businesses owners often make when it comes to their video security and storage systems and rely instead on specially designed storage architecture, purpose-built for video.
What are those mistakes, you might ask? Find the top three below.
Data is critical to your small retail business. In a world where information is the most valuable resource, you’re going to want to store every gigabyte you generate.
From your IT applications to your security system, it’s important to invest smart.
Don’t sacrifice crucial data storage and accessibility to save costs – in the long run, the best place to be is ahead of the game.
The fact is, your retail business, along with technology, will continue to evolve.
As global data creation, consumption and circulation continues to skyrocket over the next decade, small retail businesses must invest in a storage architecture that achieves that delicate balance between scalability, performance and ROI.
In other words, don’t get stuck with data infrastructure that cannot keep up.
Today that means investing in a scalable hybrid cloud infrastructure.
This can allow users to store data on-premises, as well as in private and public cloud platforms.
Hybrid cloud plugins not only enable users to choose their preferred cloud provider, but also provide them with the ability to seamlessly manage cloud storage and services, all while maintaining legacy applications and workflows.
This means that integrators can continue to provide on-site hardware at an affordable cost with the ability to scale video surveillance solutions with the growing needs of a retail business, using hybrid cloud architecture.
All the major pain points associated with cloud servers can be circumvented with a hybrid cloud infrastructure which is optimized to eliminate latency and deliver superior speed – essential for video footage accessibility – and is easily scalable and endlessly secure.
In addition to this, some solutions provide a cloud-based disaster recovery feature that keeps your data secure in the event of a system failure.
Disaster recovery can enable immediate detection when the live or archive recording location fails.
When a failure is detected, you can replace the old server with a standby, adding another line of defense for data protection.
Many small retail business owners think that due to the smaller scale of their operation, they are not on cyber-criminals’ radar for attacks.
Due to this mindset, small and medium-size business (SMB) owners are more likely to invest in cheaper, weaker security measures that will actually make them more susceptible attacks and an easier target.
As of 2021, 61% of SMBs were targets of a cyber-attack and received the highest rate of targeted malicious emails at a rate of one in 323, according to StrongDM.
This same report also identified that roughly 75% of SMBs could not continue operations if they were to be hit with a ransomware attack.
This is why it is more imperative than ever that owners of SMBs take proactive measures to invest in robust, reliable solutions that will keep their data secure.
Implementing cybersecurity best-practices can help SMBs mitigate risk.
Running routine security assessments, offering ample employee training, deploying antivirus software and enabling multi-factor authentication are among the most popular cybersecurity hygiene methods.
One step that is often overlooked is investing in secure, cyber-hardened appliances with built-in encryption, such as Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
TPM is a hardware-level security measure designed to protect your systems from malicious attacks by enhancing computer privacy and security.
This module is used for high-level security file encryption, network security and password management.Â
What’s more important than anything else is that when asking hardware or software questions, small retail business owners must rely on experts.
Business owners independently researching video data solutions tend to focus on the most cost-effective solution without thinking about the long-term repercussions.
Choosing a hardware partner that understands the vulnerabilities and risks presented to SMBs with experience architecting the best solutions is critical to long-term success.
BCD partners with some of the world’s top security integrators, distributors and technology partners to implement security solutions certified by the top video management software (VMS) and digital camera manufacturers.
The company’s global footprint includes more than 200,000 systems recording over three million cameras in 91 countries.
BCD has a heart for small businesses but unfortunately, it’s the underfunded, outdated and poorly designed security systems that suffer the most from the costs of perimeter breaches.
For this reason, the company designs its entry-level products with these deployments in mind and makes its customer support and product education resources readily available.
Through innovation and powerful partnerships, BCD aspires to provide secure solutions to those who need it most.
This article was originally published in the June edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.