Security Solutions for Schools: Improving Student and Faculty Safety with Cloud-Managed Video

An OpenEye article by: Ben Hopkins, Regional Account Executive

School safety is a vital part of operating an educational institution. In 2022, 77% of public schools reported one or more incidents of violence, theft, or other crimes, amounting to 1.4 million crimes. To help protect students and faculty from these threats, schools need a complete video security solution for fortified safety.

Cloud-managed video offers a way to increase the overall security of a school while making operations easier for IT and security teams. Incident response time, cybersecurity, and scalability can all be improved by utilizing an open ecosystem, scalable cloud-managed video solution to actively monitor your campus.

Below, we’ll look at some of the current security challenges that schools are facing, as well as how cloud-managed video security can solve those problems.

Current Security Challenges for Schools

Schools face many security challenges which hinder developing a fortified environment for their students to learn. These challenges include: 

• Incident Response Time: Being able to receive proactive alerts during critical incidents is crucial for many schools, as well as the ability to easily share footage with law enforcement to protect students and faculty.

• Scalability for Future Expansion: Rolling out a brand-new video solution can be costly and take a large amount of time to fully deploy, so a platform that allows educational institutions to scale their security according to their budget and schedule offers greater freedom for future expansion.

• Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Video security is a powerful tool for increasing school safety, but it must also be deployed with consideration of state and federal laws regarding privacy for both students and faculty.

• Technical Challenges: Downed cameras or recorders create blind spots in school security, so a solution that can immediately notify IT to address those concerns is essential for many schools.  

• Cybersecurity Risks: Over 1,300 cyber incidents have affected schools since 2016. Because these institutions store a wide range of sensitive information, including security footage of minors, it’s crucial that proper cybersecurity measures are in place when implementing a video security system to defend against internal and external threats.

How Cloud-Managed Video Fortifies School Security 

Cloud-managed video security provides an answer for the issues facing school security by providing completely remote, powerful video surveillance that can actively monitor your school through search and alerts.  

With a cloud-managed video security system, school security operators can improve incident response, leverage scalable security, reduce the burden on IT, and safeguard school data. 

Improve Incident Response 

Proactive alerts through your cloud-managed video platform allow you to quickly respond to critical incidents via mobile alerts. This can give faculty plenty of time to visually verify specific events, including loitering, vehicle detection, person detection, and more. With alerts, school staff can address the issue by either coordinating with law enforcement or school security for timely response.  

For past events, custom search options reduce the amount of time needed to review footage by using video analytics to identify a wide range of events, including person and vehicle detection, license plate recognition, line crossing, and more, as well as integrating with other systems to link video footage to alarm panel and access control events. Object detection can help specify search even more by allowing users to create specified areas in camera views to track motion in those designated areas. If a student leaves a backpack behind, or a car is vandalized, that area can be sectioned off in the camera view. Then, all motion in that area will be quickly displayed through search.  

Thumbnail search also provides a way to quickly trim down hours of footage review into a few minutes by moving through thumbnail images of security video, helping you find specific moments in no time.  

Clip sharing allows surveillance footage to be easily exported and shared via email with law enforcement or other school faculty, eliminating the need for an external physical device to share potentially sensitive information with.  

Scale Your School Security 

School security often involves a wide range of different systems to provide a better, safer learning environment for students. The more you can link those disparate systems through your cloud-managed video platform, the better. Anytime video verification can be added to access control, vape detection, and beyond, it will equip those systems with better coverage and make them more powerful solutions.  

An open ecosystem allows you to integrate your existing security infrastructure into your cloud-managed video platform, not only creating a more complete system but also giving you greater flexibility in how you implement your new solution. You can continue to use your existing cameras and hardware while keeping the door open for upgrades in the future.  

Reduce the Burden on IT 

For IT operators, a cloud-managed video solution that is browser based and easy-to-use can reduce some of the burden associated with managing video surveillance software.  

Centralized management in the cloud allows IT to push user-wide updates automatically, as well as instantaneously manage user permissions and role-based user groups. Health monitoring keeps you ahead of issues with your security system so you can quickly patch up any problems such as a downed camera or recorder. Automated software updates ensure your system is secure while reducing the burden associated with having to manually update your systems.  

Finally, system audit reports get you a complete view of all your devices with their respective information available, making it easier to keep an eye on your security system’s hardware.   

Safeguard Your Data 

Protecting the sensitive information of your students and faculty necessitates a secure cloud-managed video platform, one that’s aided with a variety of different cybersecurity tools.

• Multi-Factor Authentication: Multi-factor authentication helps prevent account hijacking due to stolen or misplaced credentials. It also prevents unwanted access from credentials left in orphaned remote clients on uncontrolled systems. 

• No Open Inbound Ports: An outbound trusted connection enables remote connectivity without the increased risk of port forwarding or punching holes in your firewall. 

• Fully Encrypted Communication: Encrypted communication keeps your data and information safe from hackers and other external threats. 

• Centralized User Management: Cloud-managed video security simplifies user management and permissions by moving them to the cloud. Changes are instantly pushed to all users and associated devices and user groups make managing large numbers of users and devices simple, secure, and pain free. 

• Identity Management Integration: Ensuring that the same user access policies and rules are applied consistently across your organization, including your video surveillance systems, adds an additional layer of protection for your school. 

Incorporate Powerful School Security Systems with OpenEye Web Services 

OpenEye Web Services (OWS) is a simple, easy-to-use platform that’s designed to limit the burden on IT while providing complete security coverage throughout your school.  

OWS seamlessly integrates with existing cameras in educational institutions, eliminating the need to replace entire security systems. By working with your current infrastructure, OWS modernizes it and provides powerful new tools for your faculty to utilize. OpenEye integrates with not only existing cameras but also environmental sensors, third-party analytics, access control, intrusion detection, and more. This open ecosystem gives you a chance to utilize modern security solutions today while allowing for scalability in the future.  

OpenEye employs the latest in protection methods to safeguard your account information, including two-step verification, password protected video sharing, and NIST compliant data encryption. Furthermore, our recorders establish a trusted outbound connection with the OpenEye Web Services cloud servers, eliminating potential vulnerabilities in your network by removing the need to open ports in your firewall. 

Learn more about how OpenEye improves incident response time for schools everywhere while lessening the burden on IT: