School security moves to the cloud

Keeping students, facilities and staff safe is crucial to an exceptional educational experience. A new white paper on the security-as-a-service Cloudvue offering from Johnson Controls and OpenBlue explains how the digital transformation of physical security is changing the way institutions across the globe deliver smart, secure and healthy learning environments.

The digital transformation of physical security

Security challenges

The aim of every educational institution is to guarantee the safety of students, staff and facilities — something that is at the heart of an exceptional educational experience.

Financial challenges

According to Cloudvue, technology constraints have historically made enterprise-grade video surveillance, CCTV and access solutions expensive to manage and scale in an educational environment.

This left a gap between cost-effective and truly effective options, forcing institutions to make tough decisions around security measures and leaving assets, students, facilities and staff at risk.

Technological challenges

Traditional surveillance and access control options could be cumbersome to use and manage. From an IT perspective, they often required expensive networked recording systems, dedicated operating systems, and routine software and firmware upgrades to ensure optimum operation, and off-network cameras created security vulnerabilities.

The inherent limitations of access control occur through the use of non-integrated, disconnected and non-scalable components. Video surveillance and access control are often managed on two different systems requiring multiple logins in different accounts to access footage across more than one location. Analytics typically required heavy processing power, which made it prohibitively expensive for an educational application. In addition, existing video surveillance solutions served as a forensic tool, rather than supply the actionable intelligence that today’s solutions provide. 

The Cloudvue solution starts with security as a service and allows users to easily control cameras, grant access to doors and set intelligent alerts with centrally managed software and cloud-connected hardware.

Custom floor plan views, map views and powerful dashboards keep data organised as operations scale. The solution’s powerful search tools and accessibility transform video surveillance footage from forensic data into actionable information. The upshot is a streamlined security solution that improves operational efficiency and reduces cost.

For further information, visit the Cloudvue website.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Goodpics