For financial institutions, security is key. With so much money floating around, moving in and out on a daily basis, it is no surprise that many people look to steal from and defraud financial institutions. A proper camera network with strong video analytics tools can be a great boon to securing banks and other financial locations.

Video Analytics Solutions for ATM Protection

According to some reports, ATM fraud in America approached nearly $3.08 billion in the year 2005: far more than either credit card or checking account fraud. For many banks and financial institutions, ATMS are their biggest worry when it comes to security issues, and with numbers like those it is easy to see why.

Video Analytics can do a great many things to help with securing ATMS. Because of the power of video analytics technology, it can analyze a number of factors in a security camera video feed and do it in real time. For example, it can distinguish when individuals are standing in front of the ATM, and correlate these images with individual transactions so you can know who was using the ATM for any given transaction.

The same technology can also be used to set off alarms and alert you or security personnel should a problem arise. If it is not a 24 hour ATM, for example, and someone arrives after hours, the Video Analytics software can catch this and set off an alarm. Alternately, if someone is attempting to tamper with the machine the software can catch this activity as well and trigger an alarm. Some Video Analytics technology is even powerful enough to recognize individual faces, if there are particular individuals which you are on the lookout for, and trigger alarms upon seeing these individuals. These are just a handful of the powerful tools which can be implemented as part of a security camera system for your ATMS.

Video Analytics Solutions for Branch Offices

As with ATMs, so can video analytics software also be used for the protection of branch offices. One of the highlights of video analytics software is its ease of use. Most of this software uses simple browser based access, meaning that you can access your security system from any computer with Internet access. Multi-level security allows multiple users to log on, with different authorizations, while keeping unauthorized personnel out.

With banks, you are generally looking at a much wider picture than you are with an ATM camera. Video analytics technology can keep track of multiple individuals and their movements. You can also use tools such as object recognition. Specific objects, such as cash registers, tables, etc., are programmed into the computer. Should these objects be changed or removed, the computer will recognize the shift and alert you to the change so that you can take the proper action.

For nighttime and weekend surveillance, video analytics software also includes motion detection, which can be used to trigger recording, automatic alerts, alarms and more. But installing the software in conjunction with other hardware, such as lights or electronically controlled doors, for example, you can also perform other actions upon alert, like locking said doors or turning lights off and on.

Conclusion

Video analytics provide powerful solutions for financial institution security, however it cannot do everything on its own. This software provides excellent monitoring capabilities, as well as simple to use interfaces and user access, but make sure that you have people available on the ground to react to threats should they occur. This will make for a strong, well-balanced security system to keep your bank or other financial institution secure from thieves and fraudsters.

Video Analytics (VA) is one of the most rapidly growing fields of the video surveillance industry. It is also known as Intelligent Video Surveillance. Video Analytics greatly enhances the power and analytical capabilities of network camera software.

As the name suggest, the purpose of Video Analytics is to carefully analyze video surveillance footage. Most forms of VA network camera software are even able to perform these analyses in real time. The analyses can take many shapes and forms. One of the more common (and simplest) forms is that of motion detection.

Taking video from network cameras which record images in a digital format, the video analytic software examines images not just frame by frame but pixel by pixel. A pixel is the most basic unit of information contained in a digitized image or video. What might appear to be only a minor change when looking at the full picture might actually cause a major change to a group of pixels, which the software recognizes and then informs the user. Video analytics software can catch even the slightest changes in an image from frame to frame by catching differences in the information sent.

When using VA software, then, it is good to have high resolution images. The higher the resolution of the video, the more precisely the software can analyze. This is because the higher the resolution of the camera, the more pixels are used to capture the image and thus there is more information for the software to analyze.

This network camera software can also be configured to recognize and distinguish certain objects, or tell objects apart. For example, if you are monitoring a specific item your shop, you could program the software to recognize that object and notice if it should change at all or go missing. Because it can differentiate between objects, it would also be able to tell if the item were replaced with something else.

Video analytics network camera software can also be used to do things such as count people walking on a sidewalk or cars passing down a busy street. With its detailed analyzing capabilities it is able to tell people and cars apart from each other and from the background, providing accurate statistics on these occurrences.

While an important part of network camera software, video analytics is not the only part. It is used to analyze information, but the software in general can also be used for many other purposes. For example, should the VA tool pick up something unusual, such as a missing object, or motion when there should be no motion or something of that sort, it can activate alarms in the building, contact the police or other authorities and even send you an e-mail notification of the event. This is known as advanced event management and is one of the many added capabilities of network camera software which utilizes video analytics tools.