Over the many decades, there have been many advancements and up-gradation in technology observed in many spheres. Be it in terms of commercial establishments, finance, law enforcing agencies, defense, state government, surveillance, educational institutions, etc. If we look at the surveillance sector, earlier it was really difficult for the enterprises to prevent crimes from taking place.
With technological developments, it has become very easy for businesses to monitor their property & assets. The rise of command center monitoring in e-surveillance has become easy for enterprises to observe and record office sites. They have now the option to monitor their warehouses and staff for various security reasons remotely from any geographical location.
What is command center monitoring?
A Command center means an entity that keeps a close watch on the activities of the organization. It raises alerts for any untoward happenings and suggests mitigation of such incidents on a real-time basis. Such command centers are mostly inculcated in universities, logistics companies, defense, finance, state governments, law enforcing agencies, and other organizations.
However, today organizations are exposed to newer risks. In an effort to match those risks they have to constantly upgrade their command center monitoring continuously.
Command center monitoring has its specific requirements which are based on a host of factors like the company’s vision, external security threat, business intelligence, and data security, etc. It not only depends upon security cameras but also the trained manpower, watching the video feed around the clock.
Advantages of Command center monitoring
Following are some of the pros of command center monitoring:
Effective surveillance
Effective e-surveillance monitoring of critical assets sometimes becomes mandatory for effective operations of the organization. With a proper infrastructure of hardware and software in place, no company asset will remain unnoticed from remote cameras. Any unusual activity at any of the asset’s locations will get easily captured for prompting rapid protective action.
24X7 preparedness
Protecting some of the critical operations of sensitive industries like defense production, security, requires continuous surveillance as these are critical to the safety and security of the nation. Input data should not only be visually clear but also the information thus secured should be easily understandable for easy understanding and taking prompt action.
People engagement
Continuous vigil is required for life-threatening operations of workers who are working at such locations. Workers aware of such video coverage feel safe that if anything happens, help will come immediately. The command center keeps an eye on any unusual activity and raises an alarm to alert the people and facilitate rescue operations.
Quick disposable of incidents
Security camera monitoring helps to provide clear visuals of the sites where an incident has happened. Such footage not only helps in easy mitigation of the happenings but also helps in reducing the cost of the investigation. Which would have occurred if such visuals had not been available or the footage was not clear.
24×7 Contact center
The command Center provides round-the-clock monitoring for effective security. In the normal course, if anything happens after office hours, there will be no effective communication for taking remedial measures. Thus, operations may come to a halt. However, a command center will provide round-the-clock communication who will be capable enough and trained to tackle such incidents which happen after business hours.
Challenges of organizations with Command center monitoring
Following are some of the cons of command center monitoring:
Manual processing of information from several sources
Challenges in the command center come when information received from different sources is integrated manually by the investigators and then provided to the operator. It leads to the underutilization of resources and delayed response to an incident.
Solution: If the operators are of the required competency and properly trained, then they will be able to analyze the data and respond quickly.
Lack of relevant data
Many times, it happens that the inputs so received are either not relevant or not in the prescribed format. Thus, no meaningful inference can be derived and a lot of precious time will be lost to take some action.
Solution: If such data can be put in the required format, then some proper integration of data can happen to ensure timely action.
Absence of well-defined procedures
Many times, it happens that the response of one operator differs from that of the other for the same incident. It depends upon their different understanding and analysis of the situation. It may also happen that if there is no operator available, there will be nobody to respond to any happening.
Solution: Therefore, there should be well-defined procedures where any operator can function with the same efficiency.
Monotony in surveillance
Operators at the command center have to remain at their workstations for long hours and keep a constant eye on the video walls. Such monotony leads to slippage of their attention thus losing crucial footage.
Solution: This can be mitigated by rotation of their workstations after some hours so that they remain alert always.
Lack of communication between command center operators and field staff
Sometimes, it happens that the command center operator and field staff are not in sync with each other. As a result, when an incident happens, crucial information may be lost leading to prolonged enquiries.
Solution: There should be well-defined procedures and the staff should be properly trained on how to respond during such extraordinary times.
Takeaways
Command center monitoring is gaining increasing importance and acceptability at a rapid pace. Now, organizations have understood well it is important to have an in-house or outsource command center for a variety of purposes. Which range from data security, business growth to stay in cutthroat competition, safeguarding national security, safeguarding the critical resources and assets.
With every happening incident, command centers have to upgrade themselves regularly so that it stays one step ahead of any calamity or any untoward event.