Big Brother Watching

Monday, September 25, 2006

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Monday morning, 9am. You walk into your office, turn on your workstation. The office assistant walks in and serves you a cup of tea. There's nothing interesting on the newspapers, so you turn to your monitor, waving a hand cheerfully at a couple of colleagues who have just come in to work. And then, your face explodes in anguish. There are more than a dozen messages in your inbox screaming panic at you. After the hysterics have died down, you try assessing what's gone wrong. Your closest market rival seems to have had a look at the design of your next product and has queued his own launch a couple of days before yours, with a better-looking design. Your alarm bells go off... is there an IP-Thief in your enterprise?

And this, in spite of the best measures of security and defense you have in place. You have smartcards and fingerprint security, you have the best identity management and protection systems in place, you have computer system and network protection with the best security software and
hardware available. Even your non-IT based knowledge is safely under lock and key with the more sensitive things under two or even three layers of security. We have been telling you in the past (and will continue to do so in the future) about different things you can do to secure this and that. Well, one of the things we have also pointed out in those stories is that there is no real defense against an authorized person doing unauthorized things. Also, once the person has physical access to the target (computer system, piece of paper, whatever), then there is nothing much you can do to prevent him from walking away with the asset (information or property).

The traditional route to protect against unauthorized and undesirable activities has been the Big Brother way; using CCTV (closed circuit television) links to keep an eye on important places, things or even people. This form of surveillance uses cameras placed at strategic locations linked by cable to security consoles and rooms. Personnel at these locations watch the video streams endlessly trying to spot something that shouldn't be happening.

The streams are also recorded using DVR (digital video recorders) onto tapes or optical media. However, while this method may work fine in multi-floor establishments, it fails at larger (city-wide) scales. When you consider your own requirement of scaling it up beyond just one city, it fails even more explosively. Let us explain in detail.

Eyes everywhere
There is no business or scenario where the need for surveillance would be absent. Even if you're a supermarket chain, you may want to employ someone to watch over your wares and make sure no one's making off with goods they didn't pay for. Stores in the more developed countries regularly employ (CCTV-based) surveillance to monitor areas of their shops they cannot directly keep an eye on. In these stores, the cameras feed in directly to DVRs in the manager's office without supervisory personnel -if there is a robbery at the store, law enforcement can use the tapes to nab the criminals. ATM booths and kiosks use cameras to keep an eye on people using the booth's facilities and if there is an infraction like ATM-fraud, the bank can use the video to trace the perpetrators.

Level-One WCS 2010 Camera	Level-One WCS 2030 Camera
Key specs: Floor or roof mounted, zoom lens, color video, built-in microphone, 270-deg pan and 90-deg tilt and rotate, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, 11g wireless, scheduled capture, motion detection, monitoring & playback software, web control interface, send images to FTP or mailbox, AV out for TV output Price: Rs 35,500 (1 year warranty) Contact: mathew.vad@mindsindia.net	Key specs: Wall mountable, zoom lens, color video, built-in microphone, no pan/tilt features, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, 11g wireless, scheduled capture, motion detection, monitoring & playback software, web control interface, send images to FTP or mailbox  Price: Rs 18,700 (1 year warranty) Contact: jerry_albert@level1.co.in
D-Link DCS 6620	XProtect Enterprise
Key specs: Wall mountable, CCD digital zoom lens, 10x optical zoom, color video, built-in microphone and 2-way audio through external speaker, MPEG-4 recording, Low-light (0.05 Lux) sensitivity, software to monitor/manage 16 cameras simultaneously, scheduled recording, motion detector Price: Rs 45,000 (1 year warranty) Contact: dlinkpr@dlink.co.in	Key specs: Software to control unlimited cameras (64 cameras per server, unlimited servers), event-activated recording, fully searchable, archive function, MPEG-4 support, multi-channel audio with listen-in, PTZ patrolling (with optional joystick control of camera), preset camera positioning, IPIX support, Evidence CD creation, data encryption and logging, logging of user actions, usable from a PDA client Price: On call Contact: milestonesys.com

Surveillance is used heavily in traffic control as well. The next time you're driving around your city, look carefully at the top-ends of the pillars supporting flyovers at important crossings. You would be sure to spot a camera there, looking at you. Construction locations have cameras looking at building supplies and stores to make sure no one's stealing or tampering with them. Sensitive establishments like research labs, pharmaceuticals and health-related concerns use surveillance to make sure information and samples are not taken outside or accessed by unauthorized personnel.

Manufacturing concerns (factories) can use surveillance to both track the progress of various lines as well as keep a check on people and material. Data centers have surveillance to help protect the deployments and make it easy to look at different areas and equipment without having to go there.

Camera behavior

Patrolling: Continuous sweeps of the environment, regardless of activity in the area. The entire view may be recorded depending on camera configuration. Some cameras will only sweep a specific number of times before returning to a preset location. Motion detection: Designate one or more areas in the camera's view port where if it senses changes in the image (using certain algorithms), alarms are triggered. Cameras with this feature can be configured to both save these images separately as well as send out alarms about the event via SMS, email or even ring pre-configured telephone numbers. Motion tracking: Sophisticated cameras can detect movement as well as track it till the target moves out of range. Fuzzy logic object detection: Some cameras can be configured to eliminate objects with undesired characteristics from their ambit of detection. For instance, if your camera is watching a highway, you may want to trigger alarms only on detecting speeding cars; or, you may want to be alerted only when trucks (as against cars and bikes) pull up at your gate. This can be based on size, shape and color. 2-way audio: Your camera most probably has a built-in microphone to pickup surveillance audio. If it comes with either built-in speakers or an option to connect a set, then you can remotely talk to the people in the surveillance area (for instance to identify someone).

IP-connected eyes
The problem with CCTV based surveillance is that every one knows how to beat them. Well, if you don't yet, watch a good Hollywood action movie (Mission Impossible would be a good start). Also, there are problems scaling the surveillance to beyond that one floor and building because of the need to lay dedicated cabling to carry the imaging. If your remote cameras also accept inputs to re-orient themselves, you would need more cabling. Then you need a place to put all those tapes, not to mention a way to manage them. Now, since surveillance is a part of your intrinsic need for security, its not a good thing if almost everyone on the planet knows how to break it or you cannot use it everywhere.

Here's where an IP Surveillance camera, which is nothing but a camera that can be connected to your LAN using Ethernet or wireless or some other means and talk TCP/IP to communicate. TCP/IP is what gives this form of surveillance its name.

This greatly enhances the range of your surveillance operation and eliminates the need to lay special cabling. If you're using it inside your campus, chances are you already have Ethernet cabling near by or if you use wireless networks, your camera should support that. Most modern IP cameras can do 802.11g wireless in addition to 10/100 or even Gigabit Ethernet. If you don't have either one handy, you can use the PSTN or cellular
networks using special adapters, to connect to your network over the Internet.

Not just for security
IP cameras (and even CCTV ones) need not be used purely for security purposes. They can be used to keep an eye on remotely deployed equipment to avoid having to go there physically to see what's happening. They can be used to study things at a distance-for instance, you could put an IP camera on Barren Island to study the volcanic activity there and connect it over VSAT to your labs comfortably back on land. You can put IP cameras over production lines to monitor progress of manufacture. Thermal or sound sensitive IP cameras can be used for environment control. Traditional cameras carry a microphone to pick up remote audio. But, there are also two-way sound enabled IP cameras that can be used for screening using the speaker on it to communicate with people at the remote site.

Nuts and bolts
Both forms of surveillance use cameras and recorders to capture and store the visuals. The cabling required differs: CCTV ones require coax or optic cabling while IP cameras need Ethernet cables or no cables at all if you use wireless. If you plan to use end-to-end encryption to protect streams from tampering or prevent others from listening-in, you can use scrambler/descrambler boxes at either end. IP surveillance deployments typically upload their imagery to regular file servers (like DAS/NAS boxes) instead of requiring DVR boxes. Obviating the need to purchase and deploy surveillance-specific hardware like DVRs and cabling can save you on cost, since IP surveillance can make use of already in-place IT hardware.

Let's look at the parallel requirement for software and manpower. CCTV based surveillance does not require any special software-your camera is connected to a DVR, with one or more monitors attached. Depending on the size and sensitivity of your deployment/need, you may use digital switching and control equipment like those used in a typical film-editing studio and these are costly. IP Surveillance does not require you to add any special software to your installation. Most cameras come bundled with applications to monitor, control and configure your camera and its imagery. Their playback software will not let the user tamper with the original copies. In addition, you can purchase and use specialized software that let you control a lot of cameras simultaneously and have complex things like fuzzy-logic based motion detection and alerting done with your regular-Joe cameras.

Protect your guards
So, your cameras are watching your people, places and things. But who is watching your cameras? Cameras are not the answer to the security jigsaw puzzle either. They are as besot with problems as anything else you have around. If you have regular cameras, anyone with a standard digital, S-Video or RYB set can plug himself in and either look at what you're watching (which may be a breach of security depending on what the camera is showing) or send you pre-recorded video while they make changes to the subject under your surveillance without you being aware that something was wrong.

When you have IP cameras, all the problems to do with TCP/IP based devices are present. For instance, your camera is now suddenly susceptible to flooding, sniffing, DoS attacks and more. Also, most cameras out there are protected with nothing more than a regular login name and password, which for the most part are left at default values. Which means anyone with access to Google can now access all your cameras if they can access its network. Some wireless cameras can be configured with encryption, but do check if your camera has WEP or WPA/WPA2 as well. WPA2 is the better option for cameras that will be on wireless. So, do you need additional protection to be deployed? A firewall just in front of the camera at the remote site, maybe able to protect it from direct attacks. It will not guard against people stealing imagery from it to study and come up with scenarios to beat surveillance. 

The way forward
Surveillance allows one to see what's happening and how it is being done. One has to learn to adapt processes and systems for a better response the next time around. It can save on manpower, money and time if the purpose is to remotely monitor something, without having to place people in personal peril. It save costs on the equipment and know-how as well.

go1984 for Camera Control
Install the software like a regular application on any system. You can connect to this system later from any machine or J2ME cell phone and monitor your cameras. When asked, during installation, select the 'Enterprise' mode to get the full feature-set to try out. Click on the IP Camera option and add our camera (by IP address) to the software. You would also need to enter the administrator user ID and password to the camera ('root' and the MAC address in our case) into this pane. go1984 also lets you add locally connected Web cams as security cams-for this, select the DirectX option and accept the locally connected Web cam listed there. Check the 'Video' option if the local web cam can record video. Activate the motion detection option and set up the desired threshold level-too much sensitivity is bad unless you're watching a high-security area.
Connect to any IP camera by entering its host/IP and credentials. You can choose to view it live or only when the camera detects motion by selecting the radio buttons for that	Open the Alarm Management node and set up how to handle events that are triggered. You can choose to upload images to an FTP server, pop up notifications, or ring your phone
This go1984 client runs minimized and can pop up automatically when new images are received-this lets you do other things and be alerted when something happens	You can use the User Management module to create users for the system (security personnel or supervisors) and assign them privileges for the functions offered by go1984
Price: $839 (Enterprise edition) Contact: http://www.go1984.com On CD: PCQ Enterprise\IP Surveillance\Surveillance\go1984 Setup.exe

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