I had the great fortune to attend the 59th annual ASIS Conference and Expo this past week in Chicago, IL. Let me start by saying that if you attended to just see the same old people and have some free meals and drinks, it was a great week, but I was there to seek out new and innovative solutions to our customers security problems, so I was ready to pull out my hair by Friday! Trying to sort through all the different vendors and what new offerings they were showing off was very time consuming and frantic. I could write 25 pages of reviews and descriptions of everything I saw and learned, but who has the time to read all that!?! Everyone’s cameras were the latest, greatest, and best. Everyone’s access control systems opened doors and reported alarms. I want to focus instead on efficient and cost effectiveness. So without further ado, here a 5 cost effective and/or efficiency boosters that I saw that will lower the cost of your operation, or make you more efficient;

1. BriefCam – www.briefcam.com – Who would like to save hours and hours of their time spent reviewing recorded video? That’s right, “not you”! BriefCam has a very unique software application that overlays video clips on top of itself to provide a short clip that shows you all the activity that happened in a selected time frame. You end up getting a short video clip with a stationary background and all the movement within the image simultaneously displayed with a time stamp included over each. You can sort by colors, direction of travel, other criteria to pare it down to only display red cars entering a parking area. Here is a link to a pretty good video summary, but seeing it live is 100x better.
2. Vigilant Robots – www.vigilantrobots.com – Anyone have a large indoor area that they cannot effectively secure and patrol due to guard or camera costs? Vigilant Robots has designed an autonomous robot that can patrol areas at a fraction of the cost of traditional guards or electronic security. They can be outfitted with a variety of sensors such as, IP video cameras, smoke detectors, heat detectors, water sensors, humidity sensors, and whatever else you or I could dream up. They are not for everyone, and at their current release, they are somewhat limited. They do not go up or down stairs, cannot open doors (an RFID tag and auto door opener would fix that), and are only built for indoors at the moment. However, these would be GREAT for libraries, data centers, warehouses, schools, or to augment existing security.
3. Now Force – www.nowforce.com – A mobile device app that turns incident reporting to crowd sourcing. A great application for first responders, campuses, schools, or large corporations. Have you ever thought of installing emergency call boxes or have already done so, but cannot cost effectively deploy them in every location that you want? Now Force has an app for that! Imagine every employee, student, or municipal worker carrying an emergency call box with them. They can effortlessly transmit a distress signal with a GPS location, photo of the event and any additional relevant information that allows you to dispatch resources in seconds or instantaneously. Example; an active shooter. At the push of a button the alert is sent, automatically transmitted with GPS coordinates to weapon carrying officers in the area, email and text alerts sent to all members of the community to shelter in place, a different email and text sent to all administration or higher up’s. All this happens instantaneously without the chance of the message getting miscommunicated, sent to the wrong personnel, or leaving people out. This will save lives and drastically reduce response times. Check out the clip here of a community that has already implemented the system.
4. Exacq Technologies – www.exacq.com – The most robust and easy to use video platform out there. I got to see their new LC series NVR’s in action. They are a small form factor low cost video server, good for small installations or remote locations tying into a larger Exacq system. They are good for up to 16 cameras (either IP or as a hybrid) and are a cost effective way for small systems to migrate to IP cameras or to efficiently add IP cameras with local storage to a remote location at a fraction of the price of competitors systems. Exacq has always put out a fantastic software and hardware product, the LC Series NVRs fill the cost conscious niche amazingly well. Check them out here on Exacq’s web page.
5. Salient Systems – www.salientsys.com – Salient Systems provides a fantastic IP video platform for your CCTV recording needs. At ASIS 2013 I got a chance to see their new CompleteView 4.2 Software. Regardless of the other updates and existing features, the TransactionTracker POS (point of sale) integration was the most powerful and feature rich POS integration I have ever seen. Retail and hospitality operations can really benefit from the POS integration by sorting video clips by transaction type, cashier ID, exception type, export features. It can be configured to automatically alert management via email or text when a threshold of a certain event (voids, returns, no sales, etc) has been exceeded, and you can remotely view transactions and the associated video in real time, as it is happening. It is currently integrating with Radiant, RetailX, and MaitreD POS systems with others on the horizon.