Cybersecurity for Physical Security: How Cloud Video Lessens IT Burden
Key Highlights
- Cloud surveillance systems demand collaboration between IT and security teams to ensure data security and operational efficiency.
- Secure implementation features like centralized management, automated updates, and multi-factor authentication help protect sensitive video data.
- Open platforms enable integration of multiple security devices, closing security gaps and providing comprehensive insights.
- Remote access and operational audits facilitate cross-team collaboration, quick troubleshooting, and enhanced security oversight.
- Adopting a trusted cloud platform like OpenEye Web Services can streamline security management while safeguarding organizational data.
Today’s physical security systems require complete cybersecurity measures to ensure data integrity. Modern security teams and IT departments are more connected than ever as they interweave processes to protect system information. This is, in part, due to rising surveillance digitization and the advent of the cloud, enabling once disconnected solutions to become unified in a cloud-managed platform.
As more businesses move their surveillance systems to the cloud, it’s vital that these organizations anticipate both the benefits and challenges that will undoubtedly emerge, requiring IT expertise and close collaboration with physical security to ensure the overall integrity of cloud platforms. This requirement must be tempered by an easy-to-use platform, both for users to navigate and IT teams to manage to eliminate any unnecessary burden on IT teams.
In this article, we’ll examine how adoption of a cloud surveillance platform and cross-collaboration amongst departments can drive greater innovation while ensuring security data is protected.
Why the New Physical Security Landscape Demands IT Expertise
Modern surveillance systems generate enormous volumes of information. Stored video, generated events and alerts, and additional data points create solutions that provide a treasure trove of operational and security insights. As well as this, applying the convenience of the cloud to surveillance solutions is now an expectation for many companies and security teams.
However, both these aspects of today’s video security systems necessitate IT oversight and responsibility. Many security teams and other departments lack the knowledge needed to ensure platform security in a cloud environment, requiring dedicated IT team members to both deploy the cloud solution while also ensuring it is a secure, trustworthy component of the organization’s larger network.
Let’s look at the areas where physical security and IT teams must prioritize collaboration to both provide a convenient, user-friendly surveillance platform while keeping it secure.
Advanced Solutions Need Secure Implementation
As systems continue to become more advanced, such as with the addition of AI-powered video analytics, they become sources of valuable data which can inform business decisions. However, this video data is also valuable to hackers. Cybersecurity company SonicWall reported that they stopped 17 million cyberattacks on IP cameras in 2024, a notable increase from 2023. This highlights the growing trend many sectors are seeing of criminals attempting to gain access to video security systems.
To protect surveillance data, organizations need to ensure that their newly deployed cloud and AI-powered systems are adequately protected, both by safeguarding user data and credentials and rolling out updates as they occur for the most current, secure platform version.
Multiple Closed Systems Create Security Gaps
Businesses leverage far more than just video security. From access control to point-of-sale systems, different devices and platforms are utilized every day to help these organizations run smoothly. However, if these devices aren’t integrated in a secure open platform and under the same protections, businesses risk vulnerable security gaps that can be attacked. A closed system also creates more work to connect data by requiring users to jump between different platforms to tie together data points.
To unlock the advantages of combining these data points while also ensuring that the larger network is protected, companies should seek to leverage an open platform. Doing so will help unify disparate systems while tying together information from security cameras, alarm panels, and other hardware and software.
Cybersecurity Requires Seamless Team Collaboration
In the age of quantum-safe cryptography, systems have become so good at defending themselves against threats that a breach normally isn’t due to any fault of the software itself. Rather, it’s because of human error.
Over sixty percent of people use the same password, or a variation of it, across accounts. Usage of external drives, such as USB, continue to be popular methods for storing data, despite the fact they’re notoriously unsecure and used by hackers in the majority of malware attacks. Over thirty percent of attacks happen because software wasn’t updated in a timely manner. And while security vulnerabilities can be patched out of software, if a hacker is able to access misplaced hardware, there’s over ninety methods with which they can hack the device.
All of these issues can be eliminated or significantly reduced if team members follow cybersecurity best practices, something made easier by cloud-based architecture. A cloud system should offer streamlined ways to access video, reset passwords, and manage exported clips based on permissions. This enables easier collaboration with IT team members and gives users the tools they need to solve redundant issues themselves, such as lost passwords, with minimal intervention. This will make the system easier to use while still ensuring account and platform data stays protected.
How a Cloud Video Solution Reduces IT Burden and Creates Ease-of-Use for Security Teams
Implementing an advanced, open cloud surveillance system provides a way to help businesses meet their physical security goals while ensuring their solution is secure. This is accomplished via a number of features through the cloud solution, including secure implementation via centralized management, connected business systems for widespread security, and seamless cross-team collaboration via remote access, operational audits, and secure clip sharing.
Below, we’ll look at how these features ensure video data is protected while still providing an advanced solution for the entire organization.
Secure Implementation of the Surveillance Solution
Implementing an advanced cloud platform can be accomplished securely thanks to centralized management, which enables easier management of deployed systems, reducing IT burden by pushing any necessary changes across users, devices, and locations remotely.
These changes include automated software updates, which can be received and instantly pushed from the cloud as they become available, helping to minimize IT Intervention and ensure your system is always secure against threats, with access to the latest features. Additionally, user management in a cloud video solution enhances platform security with applied permission changes to users and recorders, automated lost password resets, and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Integrating with identity management adds an additional layer of protection, a perk of the open platform. Identity management ensures that the same user access policies and rules are applied consistently across your organization, including your video surveillance systems.
With these features in place, IT teams can securely implement their surveillance system and trust that it’ll have the capabilities to protect user and platform data.
Connected is Protected
By unifying additional devices, such as access control, alarm panels, and point of sale, in a single security platform, businesses can combine their data points to receive greater insights into device information.
This is accomplished via an open platform, which allows businesses the flexibility to choose which systems are best for their business. Instead of being locked into a single provider, organizations can leverage the solutions that offer the greatest cybersecurity, helping them place more trust in their security architecture. This also helps close any gaps in network security and improve operations by allowing IT team members to pull that data into one place as opposed to jumping to different platforms if other device information is needed.
Seamless Cross-Team Collaboration
Finally, a cloud video surveillance solution enhances the workflows of other departments by providing convenient remote access. This enables easier collaboration by allowing IT team members to oversee location and device usage from anywhere, offering remote troubleshooting and insight into any potential vulnerabilities and offering additional departments quicker issue resolution. It also empowers other teams to solve certain problems on their own, such as lost password resets.
Operational audits in a cloud platform help reduce any vulnerabilities that may be caused by users by providing greater visibility and monitoring of user activity, accomplished through historical reports of account-based actions. These provide greater insight into permissions and enable audit trails to more easily identify user-created gaps in security. Online video sharing with auditing shows who is sharing and viewing video while password protected clips, digital signature verification, and the ability to revoke permissions further safeguard your sensitive video data.
Implement a Secure Cloud Video Platform With OpenEye Web Services
As businesses step into the future of surveillance, it’s vital to ensure your chosen solution is secure and improves operations for IT, physical security, and other organization teams. Leveraging a cloud-managed video platform is one of the best ways to ensure proper network integrity while still gaining the benefits of an advanced video system.
OpenEye Web Services (OWS) gives you the tools and features needed to deploy our best-in-class, trusted cloud-managed video surveillance solution without compromising the security of your network, customers, employees, or processes. These include a range of powerful and secure capabilities, including centralized management, an open ecosystem, convenient remote access, and insightful reports. By leveraging these tools, IT and physical security teams can work in tandem to provide a complete solution that safeguards people and data.
Interested in learning more about OWS’ trusted surveillance solution? Book an OpenEye demo today.
Book a Demo: https://go.openeye.net/get-an-openeye-demo