Workplace Security And The Role of Video Analytics

HR and Security leaders should adopt video analytics to add an extra layer of safety and security in their workplace. 

by Jim Lundy

There was an unfortunate tragedy in Morgan Hill, CA this week: a shooting at a Ford Dealer. An employee who had just been fired went to his car and then went back inside the facility to fatally harm his supervisors.

While no tragedy like this is fully preventable, this made me think what could be done in the future to keep disgruntled former employees away from a company’s premises—even immediately after they’re let go. I’m here to suggest that new technology in the form of video analytics can provide an early warning.

What is Video Analytics?

Aragon covers video analytics, which is the ability to identify people and images inside of a live or recorded video stream. In security surveillance, video analytics can be used to detect motion, faces, objects, heat maps, and more to keep track of what is going on in a given area at all times, areas that people spend the most time in, and whether or not someone is crossing a perimeter line that they’re not supposed to cross.

Video surveillance today is very human intensive, and often, critical instances are missed due to human oversight. Within embedded video analytics, the system can be tuned to alert humans when an incident occurs or when an action needs to be taken.

In the case of the aforementioned shooting incident, video analytics could have been used to identify the former employee and issue an alert. This is not to say video analytics is a be all end all solution to keeping enterprises safe, but it’s certainly a start.

Is Video Analytics Ready for Primetime?

We think it is. There are a number of providers that have solutions that work with video surveillance cameras today. Besides Google Nest, we have identified some new Hot Vendors that enable this.

For this reason, Aragon is making our new 2019 Hot Vendors in Video Analytics research note available as a free download to help educate HR and Security professionals on video analytics.