Member Article

Successful storage or spoilage

In today’s market, secure storage has an important role to play. Not only does it help curb theft and vandalism but through remote monitoring of temperature controlled goods it can also prevent loss of income through spoilage.

Companies traditionally protect their stock through the use of CCTV. Firstly, if you’ve not done so already, you need to ensure that your CCTV systems are IP. Analogue is much more appealing from an installation perspective, as virtually any analogue CCTV camera can be plugged into any DVR – so literally CCTV is as simple as plugging and playing.

However, there are many limitations where analogue CCTV is concerned, namely the scalability and flexibility. Analogue CCTV is designed to be closed; therefore it’s hard wired and more difficult to scale and IP surveillance allows much more flexibility in this field.

IP surveillance can also tackle much larger areas such as university campuses, multi-level buildings and multi-site retail stores.

Resolution can also be much better. Regardless of a camera’s image quality claims, the video signal is only as good as the connectivity, and this is more than likely to impact on the clarity of the image that is transmitted by the camera.

IP connected security cameras deliver images remotely to a monitoring station via the internet and they rely on a broadband connection being constantly available.

However, more often than not, Internet Service Providers carry out maintenance at night, taking down the connection to the cameras, but this is no good if you are relying on this for security – particularly at night when theft and vandalism is most likely to take place. If you lose IP connectivity this could result in theft, business continuity issues and financial loss, so maintaining that connection is key. You will also need to make sure that your connection between your camera and your monitor, wherever it may be, is totally secure – after all you wouldn’t want somebody to hack into your network and see the thousands of pounds worth of stock you have in storage! Even worse, they may even be able to monitor who patrols it, and when, looking for the perfect opportunity to strike.

One of the ways you can tackle this is through a Virtual Private Network, or VPN. Cloud-based VPNs, such as Beaming’s ProtectNet service, also offers flexible monitoring for staff offsite who may require remote access.

How does it work? Well, going by the ProtectNet example, which offers a private space entirely separate from the internet, this allows any staff members, whether remotely located or not, to move freely around the network without the worry of anyone hacking in. Due to the “separate to the internet” aspect of this, it also means that it remains unaffected by any activity on your company’s business network, such as wireless hotspots or congestion from data reconciliation.

It is also not very convenient if you are storing temperature controlled goods, for example, and a fridge breaks down in the time period the internet is not operating.

But, it doesn’t end there, in fact it gets cleverer. For those who store temperature controlled goods, for example dairy products, you are likely to be more concerned about maintaining that temperature, because, if refrigeration breaks down, you risk your products spoiling. What if there was a way you could constantly monitor your refrigeration units so that if the correct temperature was no longer maintained, or there was a loss of power, a member of staff could be alerted to the problem?

Remote monitoring gives you this control. The same issues apply though, as for IP CCTV. If a fridge breaks down in the time period when the internet connection is not available, this can result in a loss to your business. So how about using the dedicated security network for this purpose as well?

The beauty of a private network, such as ProtectNet, means that the member of staff doesn’t even have to be onsite at the time of the incident – they could be working remotely or just on call.

In summary, secure storage could be the key to ensuring that not only are you safe from theft and protected against vandalism, you can also monitor your products and rest assured that your business remains safe.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sonia Blizzard .