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Adam Bannister is a contributor to IFSEC Global, having been in the role of Editor from 2014 through to November 2019. Adam also had stints as a journalist at cybersecurity publication, The Daily Swig, and as Managing Editor at Dynamis Online Media Group.
Growing numbers of surveillance systems are sending images to the cloud rather than into on-site storage.
Flexible, remotely accessible and offering disaster recovery, cloud-based storage offers many compelling benefits to security teams.
But is the model viable for every kind of organisation? Might your infrastructural limitations make it a non-starter? And how secure can anything online ever truly be?
CCTV consultant Simon Lambert broached the topic in conversation with IFSEC Global, which you can see below.
Transcript
“Any technology can be right, it can be wrong, depending on the circumstances of the user that you are talking to.
“My feeling at the moment is that cloud storage is limited by the bandwidth of the network connection up to the cloud. If you have a small corner shop with a fast internet connection and a handful of cameras of limited resolution that you need to send up to the cloud, I can imagine that could work perfectly well.
If you have a hundred cameras, all HD for instance, to send up that one internet pipe down a copper or fibre wire, out of your premises, you need an incredibly fast connection – dedicated to that. It can’t do anything else. It will be totally absorbed in doing that.
“If you have that then fine. I imagine that’s a rare facility for most people so only certain people will benefit from it.
“From a security point of view, of having your storage in the cloud comes down to the modern argument of: how secure is anything that is online?
“Assurances might be given by your cloud service provider about the level of security that they offer, about certifications they have, about [adhering to] recognised international standards for data security, and you have to take each of those on balance and understand what level of protection you want. And of course, naturally, that will come at the cost of what service you are willing to pay for.”
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Watch: Is cloud CCTV viable and secure enough for your organisation?Flexible, remotely accessible and offering disaster recovery, cloud-based storage offers many compelling benefits. But is the model viable for every kind of organisation? And how secure can anything online ever truly be?
Adam Bannister
IFSEC Insider | Security and Fire News and Resources
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The headline asks, “Is cloud CCTV viable and secure enough for your organisation?”. In the accompanying video Mr Lambert discusses the limitations that he believes bandwidth availability places on cloud storage in the context of storing images from CCTV cameras. To be clear, Cloud-based CCTV systems and cloud-based storage are two different things. An end-to-end cloud-based CCTV system that has been designed to work effectively with the vagaries of bandwidth availability, as well as ever changing cyber security threats is quite different from plugging a number of CCTV cameras into standard cloud-based storage and hoping for the best. Cloud-based CCTV… Read more »
There is an interesting white paper on this subject running through the maths here – https://www.securelogiq.com/files/kb/9/Is_Cloud_Storage_a_viable_option.pdf
The headline asks, “Is cloud CCTV viable and secure enough for your organisation?”. In the accompanying video Mr Lambert discusses the limitations that he believes bandwidth availability places on cloud storage in the context of storing images from CCTV cameras. To be clear, Cloud-based CCTV systems and cloud-based storage are two different things. An end-to-end cloud-based CCTV system that has been designed to work effectively with the vagaries of bandwidth availability, as well as ever changing cyber security threats is quite different from plugging a number of CCTV cameras into standard cloud-based storage and hoping for the best. Cloud-based CCTV… Read more »