As a business owner or security manager, you’re often off-premises or in the field. This doesn’t even cover your hours off, when you should be enjoying some privacy but you’re still effectively on-call should anything happen. This means you need access to CCTV on a smartphone or tablet. This is easy enough for us to deliver. It’s a new evolution for security monitoring that enables more granular protection and access control. What control should you want on your phone…and what control should you avoid putting on a device that could be lost, stolen, or hacked?

 

Controls That Make Your Job Easier

 

1. Switch between live feeds on CCTV cameras. This will direct a lower quality second stream to your device. It will be lower quality because of your mobile device’s bandwidth limitations, not because of any limitations to your CCTV system. The first, high-quality stream from each camera will still be recording to DVR according to its normal parameters, regardless of when you enable the second stream for mobile viewing.

 

2. Movement control. For cameras that can move, you may want the ability to pan and zoom from your device so that you can follow action. This lets you track something suspicious or zoom in on it to determine your level of alarm.

 

3. Ability to trigger recording. Your system may only be set to record on movement for certain CCTV cameras. If you tune into one of these cameras and see something it’s not recording, you should be able to trigger recording remotely.

 

4. Ability to review past footage. This can be easily established, allowing you to review prior footage without hassle.

 

5. Recording ability. Even if it’s being recorded by your DVR at your business, you may feel safer with the redundancy of being able to capture the backup stream on your phone.

 

Heed These Warnings!

 

Too much control can be a bad thing. We’d recommend two elements to be aware of when you implement CCTV on a smartphone or tablet:

 

1. Avoid controls to delete footage remotely. Leaving the ability to delete footage from your device means that if it’s lost, hacked, or stolen, someone else can wipe whatever footage they like without ever stepping foot in your security office. Leave access to footage management linked to your physical security office.

 

2. Lock out and remote wipe. Make sure you have the ability to lock out and remote wipe specific devices. This way, if your smart phone is lost, hacked, or stolen, you can lock that device out. You can also remotely wipe information on that device so that the thief doesn’t have access to any security information already on the device itself.