Interview: Analogue CCTV, digital access – security in the `cloud`

Cloudview, which marries analogue CCTV with digital access and storage, is the brainchild of James Wickes.

An entrepreneur with 30 years’ IT experience, Wickes typifies a new breed of security innovator. I asked him why the market needed a product like Cloudview and if he could allay any fears surrounding cloud computing’s vulnerability to hackers. 

Adam Bannister: So, James, what is Cloudview exactly?

James Wickes: Many services are being automated into the cloud and it seems obvious that CCTV should be one of those services.

The big issue is that CCTV comes under the ‘internet of things’, so you have to physically connect a device, rather than a computer, to the internet to make it work in the cloud – and that’s not straightforward.

It can be very expensive. Cloudview introduces a low-cost, simple and secure way to access CCTV cameras over the internet from any device, anywhere. It’s also, to a large extent, future-proofed.

In particular, it does it for analogue cameras – and that, we think, is a significant advantage given the number of analogue cameras still in the world.

As well as giving you remote access you can record as much or as little information in the cloud as you want. You can control the device it is recording and alarming.

It also has a fairly sophisticated interface that allows you to put as many users onto a camera or cameras as you want. And you can control the permissions of those users.

AB: Are there any similar products on the market?

JW: There are products that look similar. There are lots of Chinese DVRs that allow remote access but they’re not secure, often complex to configure and don’t offer the advantages of the cloud as a quick, flexible and un-nickable way of accessing cameras.

What they don’t do is provide the same level of security or recording into the cloud. And you need things like fixed IP addressing, firewalls and routers to make it work – you don’t need any of that with Cloudview.

AB: And how did the idea come about?

JW: From a personal need. I had an attempted burglary and couldn’t find a product that suited my needs.

So I developed this. We all wander about with our iPads and mobiles expecting to control lots of devices, but actually it’s quite difficult to find a system you can properly control with a mobile phone.

There’s a huge drive toward remote access to CCTV that is brought on by mobile computing.

There’s also a corporate need to upgrade security without ripping out the infrastructure already in place.

AB: Which makes it a relatively cost-effective solution no doubt…

JW: It’s a lot cheaper and more flexible. If you’re buying a Cloudview product you’re also buying a degree of protection against future developments because we constantly upgrade the firmware and those improvements feed through to the user.

AB: One month after you unleashed Cloudview onto the market, what’s the response been like?

JW: I’m pleased to say that’s it’s going well. We’ve got orders running into the many hundreds.

I expect that by the end of this month we’ll have orders for more than a thousand units – which is more than we expected.

We’ve been caught on the hop, though, with demand outstripping supply somewhat, but this should come into equilibrium in March.

AB: Where, geographically, are the orders coming from?

JW: The biggest demand is in the UK but we’re getting orders from places like Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, New Zealand…

Clearly, across swathes of Europe there’s a lot of analogue infrastructure still out there, but the iPhone is with us now and people want access to their investment from their iPhone.

AB: There’s a fairly widespread perception that cloud storage is particularly vulnerable to security breaches…

JW: Customers fall very clearly into two camps: there are people that immediately do not want to take it any further because it’s cloud.

But generally we don’t have trouble persuading people to look at the product because we’re not asking them to replace anything. We’re asking them to add our service to what they already have.

AB: But how does Cloudview do to guard against hackers?

JW: The VNA – the litte box that you plug into the camera – creates an encrypted link between the camera and our service, so while the data is in transit it is protected by a TLS link, which is a sort of bank-level encryption.

I think it’s always very dangerous to say ‘nothing is ever going to get past this’ because you just don’t know. But we’re using the gold standard for data protection – we can’t do any more than that.

AB: Well given your strong start sales-wise you’ve obviously been successful in allaying security concerns…

JW: Interestingly, the end user has been more concerned about security than the trade enquiries, because the end user knows the importance of the data they have to look after – and the liability very much lies with them.

As long as we can demonstrate that security is at the forefront of our thinking in terms of product development then I think we’ll be OK.

AB: Speaking of product development: what next?

JW: Many things, but one of the most interesting is rack-mounted products. The idea behind that was: if you want to connect 50 cameras then you don’t want 50 little boxes.

But the feedback has been, “well, actually, we do want 50 little boxes as it gives us a greater degree of resilience against failure.” So we may put a hold on the rack mount for the time being.

The two things we’re concentrating on are connectivity to IP cameras – as with analogue, we plug and play into any IP camera – and improving our APIs, which let us connect to other systems.

Some corporate organisations we’ve been invited to speak to by resellers say they love our system but they want to keep their current video management or alarm-receiving system.