Tech Trends: Law Enforcement, Utilities Digitize Physical Security

1. Cloud and Remote Connectivity Accelerate Digital Surveillance

A shortage of resources, including budget limitations and access to staff that can helm digital transformation, is often a key barrier to IT modernization.

But shifting from traditional physical access control and surveillance to digital methods doesn’t necessarily require a complex, prohibitively expensive “rip and replace” operation, says Shen. Integrating with existing sensors and equipment minimizes the upfront work in digitizing physical security while delivering powerful, cloud-enabled features through a subscription pricing model.

“We just swap out the central physical access control panel with Verkada’s and then connect existing wiring into our panel, like a full takeover of the existing locks,” he said. “With our panel in place, access control is managed in the cloud, and the user can see everything from our dashboard — badge-in and badge-out events, and precise camera footage of those events.”

Another barrier to digital surveillance, historically, has been the need to surveil remote areas with poor connectivity. However, cellular gateways have made it possible to quickly deploy network access for digital surveillance systems.

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For example, the San Luis Obispo Police Department in California used the GC31-E cellular gateway from Verkada to support the installation of digital surveillance cameras in remote hiking areas.

“We have a popular trailhead parking lot off the freeway that experienced significant issues with vehicles being broken into for about a six-month period,” says Lt. Chad Pfarr of the San Luis Obispo Police Department. “We deployed a camera out there and, overnight basically, that problem completely disappeared.”

CASE STUDY: The cloud helps streamline physical security.

2. Cloud Access and AI Expand Security Capabilities for Utilities

Last year, the Volunteer Energy Cooperative, a utility serving 17 counties in Tennessee, announced a temporary closure of its office during a snowstorm. Within two hours of making the announcement, people showed up on the premises and stole items from the cooperative’s vehicles.

System Administrator Ian Pugliese was tasked with sifting through the VEC’s cloud-based Verkada archives to find footage that would be helpful for law enforcement.

“In less than 10 minutes, I tracked where the incident happened on the surveillance camera, got that clip and then sent it off to the person who requested that footage,” says Pugliese. “It was probably the easiest process I've had in IT for over 10 years.”

“It used to take me three to four days to pull footage, gather it all and send it in an email,” adds VEC System Administrator Shaun Ryan. “With this, it’s just the snap of a finger.”

Law enforcement used the footage Pugliese shared to track the movement of the perpetrators, and ultimately located and detained them.

Swift, user-friendly analysis and transmission of video recordings is a core benefit of cloud-based surveillance and security, especially at a time of increased threats to critical infrastructure. But leading vendors are now using large vision models to support AI features that enhance safety in other ways.

“AI-enabled face recognition can verify the identity of whoever is at that substation,” Pugliese says. “Using Verkada’s person-of-interest alerts, we can also upload a picture of a person that we may not want at a certain location, and the system notifies us if that person is there.”

The feature has already come in handy for VEC. “Just last year, someone kept showing up at a certain office who wasn’t supposed to be there,” Ryan says. “We added them to the person-of-interest tool, and it alerted dispatch the next time they showed up.”

3. Environmental Monitoring Protects Evidence and Other Assets

Bad actors and noncompliance aren’t the only threats to physical security. In San Luis Obispo, temperature and humidity are also potential culprits.

“Five years ago, an evidence refrigerator malfunctioned, and, because it was in a long-term storage area, we went for about a week before we caught it,” Pfarr says. “A lot of evidence was lost as a result of that, and some cases had to be dismissed."

Today, the San Luis Obispo Police Department uses Verkada environmental sensors to ensure that optimal conditions are maintained for evidence storage.

“Three weeks ago, we got an alarm that the temperature was declining,” Pfarr says. “We got down there and, sure enough, we had a refrigerant leak in our pump. We had a huge walk-in cooler that we would have lost without the alarm.”

PROTECT: Municipalities use sensors to enhance public safety in entertainment districts.

Because these sensors transmit data into a central, cloud-based system, the department’s end users can easily configure and receive real-time notifications. Evidence that helps solve crimes and make cities safer is monitored and protected 24/7/365 from environmental harm.

Digital air quality monitors, carbon monoxide detectors and audio analysis sensors can also provide physical protection from ambient threats. Paired with surveillance, access control and AI features such as face recognition, utilities, law enforcement and other entities that serve the public are closer than ever to having a single-pane-of-glass experience for physical security.