Does your security operation need evidence management?

Your security cameras captured a critical incident — that’s all that matters, right? Actually, how you manage the evidence you collect can be a critical benefit — or detriment — to your security efforts. Here, we break down the importance of evidence management for private security professionals.

Your job as a private security provider doesn’t stop with surveillance. In fact, that’s where it starts. From CCTV footage to smartphone videos to reports from onsite security guards and the public, the information you collect is the foundation of driving smart security practices — when you can use it effectively. 

Here, we share how the right data management system can make your security efforts more efficient and effective.

Aggregating different types of data

Today’s technology allows you to collect information in a number of ways — cameras worn by security guards, CCTV footage and video and images provided by your clients or the public are just a few examples of data you may rely on for your operation. But this information is only helpful if you can effectively use it.

An effective data management system for private security companies needs to seamlessly unite different types of data into one place. This helps create a clearer picture of what happened, and makes it easy to confirm or dispel any claims.

This is particularly important in private security, where different CCTV systems can be challenging to integrate with other platforms. Knowing that finding effective video management software for CCTV is a challenge for security companies, the Axon platform is built to ingest and manage all different types of data from various sources. 

“We made an effort over the past couple of years to make Evidence.com ingestion-friendly,” says Salvatore DeMauro, director, Sales Engineering, “meaning that we have all types of different pathways to get data in so that we can be an efficient aggregation tool for our customers. Evidence.com has the ability to ingest virtually any CCTV format, which means that most CCTV platforms can be easily ingested and managed with Evidence.com.” 

“Evidence.com has adapted to be able to play back a myriad of different formats, which is a big benefit to anybody who's trying to aggregate third-party data into our system,” he says.

Secure sharing with customers

Sharing rich data like video and audio can be cumbersome. The large files are difficult to share via email. Plus, if your data’s not aggregated, you may be sending multiple emails with multiple files. That all means less security and less efficiency.

That’s where Axon’s cloud-based platform can help. 

“The sharing capability is really powerful from a cloud perspective,” DeMauro says. “These assets are ingested in a secure way, they're managed in a secure way, and they're shared in a secure way. Another advantage we offer to our customers is the ability to share data with other Axon users with the click of a button, and just as easily with those not on the platform.”

AI-driven redaction

Sometimes, security footage needs to be shared publicly. But that doesn’t mean every person or piece of information should be public. Redacting that information protects your business from unwanted liability.

Traditionally, redaction is a manual process, which means it’s both time- and labor-intensive. But with Axon’s Redaction Assistant tool, artificial intelligence does the work for you, automatically redacting the faces and information that you don’t want to share. 

This is especially important in highly regulated environments such as hospitals, where it’s critical that private information is protected.

“In hospitals, redaction is huge because a body-worn camera could scan the room, breeze past the monitors and capture somebody's entire medical record on video,” DeMauro says. “Our redaction assistant is designed to find screens and automatically redact them out just for that reason.”

Take control of your data

With the Axon platform, you can easily capture, aggregate, store, review and share the data collected by your surveillance methods, giving your operation the ability to provide an increased level of protection, privacy and customer service. Let’s talk about the benefits of Evidence.com to your security enterprise.