Surveillance Cameras Security Reviews
Surveillance cameras, or closed circuit television, is the technology I am evaluating. For example, you generally see these camera at a bank, gas stations, malls, and etc. They are different than broadcast television because the signal is not openly transmitted, although some systems might communicate through wireless links.
Some assets that the surveillance cameras are protecting are people safety, confidential informations, and any other valuables. With the surveillance cameras in place. If people get attack in the view of the surveillance cameras, the event will be recorded so that the adversaries can be punished. For confidential informations and other valuables, the goal for the surveillance camera is to prevent information from being stolen without gaining any information about the adversaries to catch them. In addition to this goal, just having the camera in place will make the adversaries think twice before doing anything illegal.
Potential adversaries include common thieves, professional thieves, and any other adversaries who would want the assets that the surveillance cameras are protecting. For common thieves, threats to attack surveillance vulnerabilities might be simple as wearing a mask or to cover the cameras with paint. This way, the camera won’t be able to identify the thieves or to record the crime. For professional thieves or other adversaries, they might want to steal the assets without causing commotions. In this case, and example of a threat would be hacking into the surveillance system through internet (wireless) or the wires in the system (non-wireless) to tamper with the cameras to tamper with the things that the cameras are recording.
There are many weakness in surveillance camera. First, they are usually stationary. This gives the adversaries chances to study their location and plan their attacks accordingly. Second, for the cameras that moves, they tend to move in a pattern. This will also give the adversaries a way to study the pattern and to avoid the cameras. Third, they are fairly easy to get destroyed and there are many simple ways to block the cameras. This gives the adversaries chances to completely eliminate the surveillance system.
In order to defend against these weaknesses, there are ways to improve the cameras. First, if we create cameras that are not stationary, meaning they move in random patterns in the store while still covering the assets, this will make it harder for the adversaries to spin point their locations easily. Second, if we random assign each camera to cover different angles while maintaining a view for all the assets that needs to be protected, then the adversaries can’t time the camera movements. Third, if the camera are made of tougher materials, for example, bulletproof glass and metal that can’t be broken so easily, then the adversaries can’t destroy the cameras so easily. We can also add defends mechanisms to the cameras such as hooking the surveillance system to an taser gun or tranquilizer gun that fires to anything close to the assets, or sleeping gas. Also, if we can have some of the cameras in the system are less visible, then it will increase the chances that the adversaries won’t be able to find it.
Depending of the assets we are trying to protect, for example, if the surveillance cameras are for a convenience store, then most of the assets are products in the store. Therefore, chances that these items are being stolen by professional thieves are very unlikely, which means that the cameras for those assets can be less “high tech”. However, some improvement such as dealing with things blocking the cameras still need to be fixed. On the other hand, if the cameras are trying to protect highly confidential, important assets such as, famous artwork or human lives, the surveillance cameras for these assets needs to have minimal vulnerabilities. Therefore, weaknesses I mentioned above needs to be fixed as soon as possible. These cameras need to have a higher tolerance to treats. With the technology we have currently, I believe the assets that are more important have surveillance cameras that have less vulnerabilities. As technology evolves, I believe that more powerful cameras will be invented while the current “high tech” cameras will become more affordable to places with less critical assets. Thus, the overall of security of surveillance cameras should increase.
I think surveillance cameras are very useful as a security system to prevent crime and to record illegal activities. However, the treats to attacks the hardware and software vulnerabilities seem to be too simple to easy to create for the various adversaries. With the technology we have, we can improve the cameras to decrease the vulnerabilities. Also, as technology evolves, stronger cameras will be invented to boost up the fault tolerance of the surveillance cameras.