10 Reasons Why You Need a Cloud Video Surveillance System for Your Business 

Operating a successful business often means dealing with unique problems throughout the day. It involves juggling the day-to-day responsibilities of your organization while continually finding ways to make processes more efficient in the long term. 

Implementing a cloud-managed video surveillance system offers improved operations by not only keeping your business secure but also giving you new insights into the efficiency of your workplace. In fact, utilizing an open platform cloud video system can be one of the best ways for your company to optimize efficiency while saving money in the long run. 

Below, we’ll cover some of the best ways cloud video surveillance can help you get the most out of your workplace operations. 

1. Keep Your Facilities Secure 

Cloud video surveillance simply provides more streamlined and effective ways to secure your facilities. 

With a cloud-managed platform your team can stay focused on what matters most with cloud-based video tools that help to strengthen your existing security efforts. Video analytics enhance your business’ security by identifying suspicious or criminal behavior. Different analytic types can be leveraged for a variety of situations to help ensure your employees and customers are safe, including: 

• Person and Vehicle

• Loitering

• Line Crossing/Intrusion

With these video analytics in place, your team can proactively respond to critical or suspicious situations. This is accomplished by combining this advanced technology with powerful cloud features through your video platform, such as alerts and search, which provide a smarter and streamlined surveillance solution.  

Thanks to cloud-to-cloud integrations, video can be easily tied to additional business data to provide a more complete picture of your security. This includes access control or environmental sensors, and when alerted can enable proactive response, including clearing false positives. These powerful cloud-based tools unlock your system’s full potential and allow you to better protect your people and assets.    

2. Simplify Security Management 

Cloud video surveillance provides a unique way to simplify your existing management model through a few helpful facets. 

Opting for a cloud-based surveillance platform allows your team to access video and your system from anywhere. Remote clients ensure your team can work where and how they need to while also creating a complete view of your business across disparate locations. Beyond access to video, having a cloud-based system helps optimize your teams’ workflow by reducing the time it takes for the most common tasks thanks to a rich feature set all based in the cloud. This allows for your organization to work collaboratively across locations, departments, and teams. Whether sharing clips, reports, or other system insights, cloud-based video surveillance provides opportunities to further improve security management processes beyond time savings thanks to more intelligence uncovered for a variety of use cases.  

3. Increased Return on Investment 

The fear for many business owners looking to implement a cloud video surveillance system is the total cost for such a system. It’s a reasonable precaution: when it comes to your business, you’ll probably want a thorough and comprehensive system, but you also don’t want to break the bank, especially if you’ve already spent money in recent years. 

By opting for an open platform cloud-managed video solution, business owners can leverage their existing cameras and security devices. Instead of having to devote budget to a complete rip-and-replace of their system, you can take advantage of the investment you’ve already made and instead allocate those resources to building on that foundation. Plus, by leveraging system video analytics, you can upgrade to next-generation security while still using your existing cameras. This also allows you to upgrade your system at a pace that works for your company, both saving you money and increasing the value of your surveillance solution. 

An open platform system allows you to connect other business systems together for a more complete solution within a single pane of glass. Not only does this enable you to tie other data points to your video security, such as from point of sale, access control, or environmental sensors, but it also opens the door to future innovations. Instead of worrying that your system will quickly be outdated by the latest advancements in security technology, you can rest assured that your system will adapt and evolve, becoming smarter to meet the needs of your business today and tomorrow. 

4. Prevent Shrink 

Shrink can be a huge factor for many businesses investing in a surveillance system; however, when analyzing large amounts of data or video footage, it can be hard to know how to more efficiently tackle the problem. 

With the right video security system, shrink can be more effectively targeted through several strategies, one of which involves your point-of-sale (POS) system. By integrating transactional data with video, businesses can start to identify where shrink most often occurs. Fraud and faulty transactions can be more quickly identified, and appropriate steps can be taken to ensure this weakness in your organization is patched. 

OWS users can transform their video security system into an invaluable data source by combining it with transaction data, putting advanced search and alerting functions to work for you.  

5. Streamline Investigations 

With a cloud-managed video security system, investigations into suspicious or criminal activity get a significant upgrade. Now, video can be easily found through powerful search features, as well as exported and shared securely via the cloud. 

You’ll no longer have to rely on external hardware, such as thumb drives, to share video with other parties. Instead, your team can find the right clip in minutes versus hours, saving your business valuable time and resources. From there, you can export the video and share it to law enforcement or insurance agencies within the platform, streamlining the investigation process even more. Gain complete control and visibility once shared with features to manage access to the clip including the ability to download, set expiration dates, and see who has viewed or downloaded shared clips.  

6. Increased Cybersecurity 

Part of implementing a video security system means having the right cybersecurity measures in place to protect your business. Whenever an additional system is brought into your network, it’s vital that said system is secure and protected so it doesn’t jeopardize the cybersecurity of your organization. Not only that, but it should give you the tools you need to deploy cybersecurity best practices. Some things to consider when choosing a cloud video system include: 

• Eliminate Open Inbound Ports: The right cloud video security platform will enable remote connectivity without the increased risk of port forwarding or punching holes in your firewall. 

• Automated Software Updates: Automated software updates reduce the likelihood of vulnerabilities being left unpatched. Cloud video streamlines this process, reducing the burden on IT while keeping your system secure. 

• Digital Signature Verification: To authenticate a shared image or video file and prove that it has not been altered, a cloud-managed video platform can provide a digital signature for credibility. 

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Choose a system that makes it easy to deploy cybersecurity best practices such as multi-factor authentication, or the requirement of more than one independent form of credential to verify the user’s identity. 

7. Identify Operational Improvements 

Using your video security system to optimize your business operations can be one of the best ways to utilize your security investment. Locating and addressing areas in your workplace where inefficient processes are occurring can help lead you and your team to more effectively improve operations. That optimization starts with identifying any inefficiencies in workflow or throughput through reports or alerts. It can also highlight areas that may need better employee training or more focus on sales and marketing initiatives. 

Video can also be used to uncover business intelligence around the behavior of customers, whether that’s how they navigate your facilities or how long they typically wait before being helped. From there, you can take action to change procedures, improve training, or optimize sales or marketing initiatives. These actions, alongside your efforts to improve workplace efficiency, derive more value from your video security system and directly impact your bottom line.  

8. Improve Employee Safety

Regardless of which sector your business is in, workplace safety is a priority. However, it’s not always the most straightforward aspect to manage closely 24/7. With a video surveillance system, finding new ways to improve the safety of your facilities for your employees becomes much easier. 

By having a system that allows for alerting on unsafe procedures, your team can ensure team members are aware of activity that may cause harm as soon as possible in order to take corrective action. Search can also be a powerful tool to review past events to see what procedures aren’t being followed and if more training is needed. In the case that any video needs to be shared with insurance companies following an incident, cloud-managed video makes it easy to quickly export and share clips securely via email, taking some of the burden of managing safety. 

9. Ensure Regulatory Compliance 

Compliance is a required part of the equation for many businesses when it comes to video surveillance. So, it makes sense to have a system that you can trust, and one that keeps your business compliant with local or federal regulations. 

Video surveillance systems can help businesses meet specific video retention or video storage regulations in your state or country. It can also provide tools such as detailed reports to simplify the management of staying compliant, reducing the time and resources required. 

10. Reduce Burden on IT 

For your IT department, managing a complicated video system only adds to the ever-growing mountain of tasks they have to work through. So, what’s the solution? 

For many, the answer is a cloud-managed video surveillance system to reduce the time spent by IT on redundant or time-consuming tasks. 

Because you access your video security in the cloud, device and user management can be handled from anywhere. This includes server software and firmware updates, which eliminates having to be physically present to update your system. Cloud user management ensures that everyone has the right access to your system, with configurable user groups that streamline the process onboarding and offboarding users. Automated password updates alleviate unnecessary burden on IT by simplifying the process of resetting lost passwords. This has the added benefit of reducing the likelihood of shared user credentials, making things even easier for IT by keeping your system secure. Additionally, integrated identity management and multifactor authentication (MFA) keep your platform secure while enabling your system’s users to access it hassle-free. 

In short, a cloud-managed video security system allows you to enjoy all the benefits of video security without putting any extra stress on IT thanks to moving management of users, locations, and devices to the cloud. 

How OpenEye Can Improve Your Business Operations While Reducing Costs 

A cloud video surveillance system can take your security to the next level through powerful features. 

With cloud video, your system becomes an active investment that can prepare you for the future needs of your business. Not only does a video surveillance system help fortify your business’ defenses, but it can also help save you money by identifying operational weaknesses and helping you manage your site more effectively. 

With OpenEye, you can fully optimize your new or existing security system by taking full advantage of the OpenEye Web Services (OWS) cloud-based video management platform.  

If you’re interested in learning more about how OpenEye can help strengthen your security and streamline operations, let’s talk. Book a demo to get a personalized look at how OWS can work within your business.