CCTV review of the two main robust CCTV products in the market place…we looked at both and where they win and lose.
Monthly Archives: August 2010
CCTV news
Have some of the big installers made poor acquisitions and then priced new jobs too low during this recession? See what we have to say at integrated cctv…. view blog
CCTV security news. Financial report on security companies
CCTV the state of the industry
Plimsoll analysis have recently produced an interesting report on the financial health of the CCTV and security industry. They carried out an in depth study of 391 leading UK security firms and found that the majority of companies are coming under increasing threat of failure. Their study found that of the 391 companies only 159 were in a good or strong position, a somewhat frightening statistic if you are a CCTV security installer today.
Fierce competition.
The reasons however are clear , fierce competition has driven prices and margins down leaving profits hard to find. Logistics often means cutting engineers is difficult without seriously compromising service levels and those who have tried have and found it impossible to reach industry standards for service and response times and as a result have inevitably lost customers. It is estimated that of the 359 companies included in the survey as many as 33% are actually making a loss and are in danger of takeover or complete failure.
So how can this be addressed? well to be brutal some companies deserve to fail. Installing at a loss, as loss leader in the hope that service incomes will make profits in the end are short sited and simply drive good businesses to the wall . Some of the big boys have been guilty of this during this recession.
Cuts.
Most of the of the more clever players however have simply cut away the excess, driven down stock levels and hung on in there by the seat of their pants. Slowly but surely the CCTV security industry is emerging from the economic downturn, ready to take on the IPCCTV revolution and get back to see strong balance sheets by early 2011.
Dual path IP monitoring
Dual path IP monitoring.
It is clear to see the benefits that a dual path monitoring system can
bring to any security system. Peace of mind for the customer and
almost always a prerequisite of the insurance company, it is obvious
two paths are better one.
Line cuts.
In the not too dim and distant past single path monitored phone
connections were all too common. On many occasions an engineer would
turn up after a break-in only to find that all the incoming lines had
been cut often at the top of the telegraph pole. The perpetrators
would then have simply disabled the bell box and helped themselves.
The central station, Police and the customer, none the wiser!
Insurance.
Insurance companies soon wised up to this and driven by the need for a
solution, products were developed using mobile phone technology to
send a secondary signal out via the mobile network to the waiting
central station. The dual path monitoring solution was born and has
been an unqualified success ever since its inception.
Legacy signalling providers obviously designed their services around the old PSTN infrastructure. One company however thought beyond this legacy infrastructure and planned their product around what was
inevitably to become the future. The future is Broadband and the
future is fibre.
Emizon have designed their service to support installers take advantage of the IP environment including fibre and next generation networks. As a result they are leading the way in cost effective, secure dual path signalling and Emizon IP is now being specified as
standard by many installers. The benefits include on line access to enable a remote maintenance and remote programming which is enabled via a serial port integrated into the TDC. Installers can use this service to make changes to channel inputs and check the signal strength remotely. In addition, using an on-board set of relays, DVRs can be given a
reboot often all they need, saving engineer time on a site visit. And as an IP service integration with other building services is also that much easier to achieve.
Secure IP monitoring over broadband.
However most importantly Emizon has been specifically designed for the
broadband era and is secure and easy to use as a result. No unexpected phone
bills either to explain away. But how does it compare price wise to
other products? Well very favourably. Central stations have seen the
future and keen pricing will encourage installations. The unit is not
site specific so engineers can carry the TDC in their car and fit a
unit on the day whatever the signalling grade required, panel or GPRS network is available and with either dynamic or static IP addressing. With pstn connectivity being added later this summer and meaning that the same Emizon TCD can be deployed whatever the engineer is faced with on site. Simple.
No other way forward.
When we look to the future it is hard to see that fibre and broadband
are going to be superceded by a new technology soon. So with Emizon
exploiting broadband so cleverly, it hard to see a dual path
signalling product that is really capable of matching the benefits
Emizon can provide.
Biometric finger print reader
Biometric fingerprint readers.
Biometric finger print readers are undoubtedly the future of access control. The traditional methods of access control solutions uses either fobs , proximity cards or key codes. All of these suffer from one basic floor, they are all easily compromised.
Security floor.
Quite simply , a code can be told to anyone , a card and fob passed to a friend or colleague. Of course its not always that easy as access control software does have some basic security functions to recognise misuse. However, ultimately once this is discovered the system has already been compromised and quite simply this is not acceptable .
Total security.
So how does the biometric fingerprint reader protect against this. Well we all have a unique fingerprint , this cannot be replicated, so the person presenting their fingerprint data is the person who is genuinely allowed through the door.
Why use anything else?
Why have businesses not adopted this means of entry before then? Well they have tried , but biometric readers are to say the least unreliable, dirt, dust and rain all affect the quality of of the data being read from the fingerprint and to be fair they are very slow. Fingerprint data takes a lot of processing power to ensure it is correct and standing outside a door for 3 or four seconds may not seem a long time but on well used doors it is untenable
Integrated access control solution.
So has anything changed? Well yes, companies know it is the way forward and in the last couple of years big steps have been taken to improve the technology. iEVO are one such company that has now produced a full proof solution. By integrating their technology with partner companies such as Paxton we see a fast, full proof solution.
They actually save money!
large organisations that get through numerous employees and vast numbers of cards will see huge savings by migrating to biometric solutions. It will not be long before these fingerprint readers are common place and we will all soon get used to fast effective entry solution. Best of all, we carry the key on our own person.