Managing the safety and security of your facilities and the people that use them can be a complex task. For some businesses, the CCTV may be required to act purely as a deterrent, its physical presence simply in place to help prevent unwanted or suspicious activity. However, for many businesses, the requirements can be a lot more sophisticated.  

With CCTV now commonplace within most business premises, the demand on any installation varies from sector to sector. As such, footage requirements in terms of storage and capacity can vary and should be a key consideration when planning or appraising any system installation.

Determine Your Footage Requirements  

The industry standard for recorded footage tends to be 30 days, however, depending on the sector and system requirements, there can often be a business case to extend this. It is therefore critical that when specifying any CCTV installation, that you consider your exact footage requirements.  

Once specified, one of the questions that you should also be asking yourself is, “do people know you only keep footage for 30 days?”. If the answer is yes, then this could pose a risk to the business.  

Take a warehouse operation that stores high value goods for example, should an incident of theft occur and have not been identified within a 30-day period, there is a high chance that the evidentiary footage will have already been deleted. Not only that, but the threat of re-offending would also increase. This can be the same scenario for any business where an incident, whether it be theft or health and safety related occurs and there isn’t an immediate notification of the incident.  

Consider System Enhancements  

Whilst there may be a proven need for additional footage within some businesses, it is worth taking time to look at the additional system features that CCTV has to offer as an alternative or enhancement. Having additional footage stored may be beneficial to a business but can risk making the overall system more costly and less efficient.     

However, technology does offer a solution with the availability of sophisticated AI technology and integration with other security systems.  

One of the many benefits of these types of integrations is that CCTV can be effectively configured to detect events that may require further attention. From alerting security to unauthorised access to a restricted area, facilitating monitoring of high value goods or assets, or tracking potential trespassers and unrecognised visitors, these events can be flagged for review or trigger an alarm to facilitate an immediate response. You no longer need to be concerned about whether people know that you only store your footage for 30 days, as any alerts or incidents can be flagged or saved in the system for future reference.  

Not only that, but with video analytics this also means that hours of CCTV footage can be sorted through with ease. Appearance searches means that specific persons or vehicles of interest can be easily tracked.  

Is Your CCTV System Scalable and Futureproof?  

With any CCTV system installation, it is important to continually appraise your current requirements and objectives to highlight any potential security gaps and risks. One thing to consider is system scalability as this can potentially impact your storage and therefore footage capacity.  

If your business premises are growing for example, not only, do you have to look at the ease of adding additional cameras, but also review the impact on your footage requirements. If a business is looking to have 30 days of saved footage, any increase in cameras will result in a reduction in the capacity to store footage, it is therefore important that you look at increasing your storage capacity to take account of this.  

Not a ‘one size fits all’ approach  

It is important that when considering a CCTV installation of any kind that you should look for a supplier that will help you undertake a thorough appraisal of your requirements and objectives. Requirements can vary from sector to sector, the size and the nature of the premises can all have an impact on the final system.  

At TouchStar ATC, our in-house team offer a complete end to end management service from specification through to project management, implementation, and post-sales support. We’ve been supplying bespoke security solutions to businesses across a variety of sectors for more than 30 years. Our CCTV experts are on hand and more than happy to assist you in choosing the right system to suit your organisation.

Get in touch today to find out how we can help.   

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – LYNDEN JONES

Lynden joined Touchstar ATC (formally Feedback Data) in a sales role for Access Control in 2010.  Prior to joining the company, Lynden held both Production and Account Manager roles, gaining wide technical and commercial experience within the electronics market.  

In 2013 Lynden was promoted to Sales Director and in 2017 he took overall responsibility of the business as Managing Director. As well as running Touchstar ATC, Lynden still remains extremely active in the sales and key account management aspects of the business. When not involved in the business, Lynden is a keen performance car enthusiast.