Alert! Surveillance Cameras are to be Under Surveillance!

“This pandemic made the entire world realize the power of nature”

This is a globally accepted truth. Also, one cannot deny that this has also led to aggravated cyber threats across the world. IoT devices are trending as the major entry point for cyber security attacks. A single, vulnerable camera, potentially can be hacked in less than a couple of minutes.

Surveillance cameras are devices that help monitor what’s happening in an environment. Especially places that are protected and/or hazardous where human presence is a safety issue. These act as a “third eye” in tracking the environment and act as a barrier to thefts, intrusions, attacks, etc. They also safeguard the public, industrial spaces to ensure the smooth functioning of operations.

When these surveillance cameras are connected to the internet or a corporate network, they become “SMART IoT devices” and gain the potential to do more than just recording the video feeds.

Example: Camera connected to the internet aids the Facilities Personnel to get real-time alerts on the solicitors entering the prohibited areas.

More manufacturers, more complexities!

There are multiple I.P camera manufacturers in the USA including Schneider Electric, Dahua Technology, Panasonic, Bosch Security Systems.

Security teams procure surveillance cameras from different manufacturers for various reasons like

· Resolution

· Cost

· Configuration & controls

· Ease of installation

· Maintenance

· Avoiding vendor lock-in

Manufacturers have differing specifications and new features are continuously introduced for competitive and better user experience, reasons.

Example: Time configuration of cameras varies from one to another

This makes the surveillance camera-based security system heterogeneous. This heterogeneous security setup complicates the management day of InfoSec Personnel /Facilities team from a maintenance and management perspective.

Configuration Gap can cost your network security!

Yes.

When the security infrastructure comprises heterogeneous devices (surveillance cameras from different manufacturers / makes) with varying configurations, a small mismatch can result in a “Configuration Drift”. This is common as the hardware and software undergo changes often to upgrade the product/application/environment or fix vulnerabilities in already released firmware.

However, this is painless when the devices are not too many . It can be easily managed manually. But for a mid-sized or an enterprise with multiple cameras across distributed locations, it makes the maintenance cumbersome.

When there is ‘n’ number of cameras deployed in your enterprise, finding the root cause of the configuration drift is a daunting task especially when maintenance documentation or trail is not maintained. .

This may cause security audit issues during the annual security auditing or lead to expensive malware compromises.

Contact us at SmartHub.ai? You might be missing the one go solution to all your maintenance problems!