Safe and Secure Video Data in a Digital World

• By Ginger Hill
• Jun 25, 2013

With terms like “the cloud” and “Big Data” infiltrating the world, it seems people are becoming more and more aware of the dangers that can occur should sensitive information be breached. In response, the security industry has stepped up to provide cost-effective, usable solutions for data security in a variety of industries. One such company, Spectra Logic, based in Boulder, Colo., specializes in digital tape and disk-based backup, recovery and video surveillance storage solutions.

Speaking with Ray Heineman, business development lead, Spectra Logic, he believes that it is important to employ more analytics in digital video files, because this allows for predictive analysis of data, thus producing trends.

“Analytics becomes more important in the security industry as more technologies are becoming more readily available,” explained Heineman.

However, when it comes to the video surveillance market, one current trend that is easy to identify is the rapid transition from analog to digital, which aids in producing a mature video surveillance system.

According to Heineman, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific are all digitally based. This is because they are “building out new security systems, which enable these areas of the world to start with digital video recording.”

America and Europe, though, are in the transition stage, because most of their “current systems are analog-based, VHS recording,” Heineman informed. For example, some casinos in Las Vegas are still using VHS recordings that only save 9 days’ worth of video files.

“As this transition takes place, digital information gets larger. Digital cameras provide an improvement of resolution, but they demand higher storage capabilities, and clients are asking for longer-term retention of the digital video recordings,” said Heineman.

This is where Spectra Logic comes in, partnering with Milestone to create a combined solution as a VMS provider, storing surveillance video recordings in a digital tape library, providing longer-term retention.

The key benefit of VMS is that it “captures video at its native frame rate and resolution, and stores it for a certain amount of time,” said Heineman.

This is important for many industries including entertainment, hospitality, banks, hospitals and schools, but perhaps even more intriguing is the legal field.

A court of law, in need of digital video files, typically exercises a “chain of custody” order, which says that the video presented must be at the resolution (megapixels & frame rates) that it was captured in to be admissible. With Spectra Logic’s solution, they are able to retain the digital video files in the native resolution.

Why is this important? Well, let’s say a murder trial is coming to an end, and the jury is taxed with making a decision and presenting their verdict, which points to guilty. There is a video recording that would prove the person on trial is innocent, but it does not fit within the requirements of the chain of custody and is therefore, not able to be used as evidence. The jury may convict an innocent person. Had the video been in digital format in the exact same resolution that it was captured in, the person on trial may be found not guilty due to video evidence.

With over 30 years of experience, the goal of Spectra Logic is to develop high-density, feature-rich storage products and support their customers globally. “We enable our customers to maintain and retain their digital video files for a longer term,” concluded Heineman.