IFSEC 2015: CCTV, Big Data, Face Recognition and Privacy

Last month, the UK’s largest security trade show, IFSEC, took place in London. IFSEC was very much a meeting place for the fast moving Security industry to raise questions concerning security surveillance and CCTV, in terms of hardware, software and camera requirements.

Big Data

Amongst the main topics, we’ve heard a lot about “Big Data”. The Internet of Things generates a huge amount of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data through online surfing, websites, social media… and also security software.

But how can we transform this providential information into “Big Data”: structured and analysed information which will enable you to lead decision making, drive bankable actions, improve performance and reduce costs?

Face Recognition Technology

With face recognition technology, security software can collect data about the age, gender, dwell time or direction of travel of people.

Demographics

If you collect and analyse the data about demographics and how these change during the day, you can easily see how valuable this information can become – let’s say for the digital signage market – helping you to improve the relevance of your campaigns.

Monitor audience numbers

With age and gender recognition, you can monitor your audience numbers (how many people looked at the screen while your content was being played).

Match your advert to your audience

You can record the gender ratio of those walking in front of your screens, enabling you to match your advertisement with the audience. Some software can even measure emotions such as happiness or sadness felt by a viewer.

Individuals

The Internet of Things curates a lot of information – including information that can be used to identify, locate a single person or to identify an individual in context.

UHD/4K

Facial recognition technology, with the development of Ultra Haute Definition images (UHD/4K) will obviously be able to identify and locate a single person in the crowd.

But…

For this very reason, we are pretty sure that face recognition technology and IoT will keep on raising an age-old subject, the threat of privacy.