Threats against critical infrastructure have always required the highest levels of security, ensuring all eventualities are catered for. In many mainstream applications, the potential threats are usually understood by the user. Theft of assets, fraud and risks against staff are common risks which must be mitigated, but through risk assessments many users can identify potential weaknesses in their security and take appropriate steps to increase the level of protection on offer.
However, moving away from mainstream businesses and organisations, the scope of possible exceptions and events increases exponentially when dealing with critical infrastructure. While facing many of the issues which threaten mainstream businesses, critical infrastructure sites also must be aware of risks from terrorism, protest and civil unrest, wide-scale disruption and malicious acts which may be driven by political or criminal interests. When a critical infrastructure site is attacked, the fallout can be city-wide or even nationwide.
Potential losses are significant, and as a result it is vital that the security in place does not just look for known threats, but can also detect and notify when unknown or unexpected threats occur. With the use of smart technologies, this can be achieved, even in the most sensitive applications.
IPS offers IPS Critical Infrastructure Protection, an intelligent video analytics module for the real-time protection and intrusion detection of critical infrastructure applications such as power stations, nuclear plants, utilities, transportation and other high risk sites. The system has been designed to deliver accurate detection of intrusion into secured outdoor areas, alerting authorities and on-site teams who are charged with protecting especially sensitive installations.
IPS Critical Infrastructure Protection makes use of a three-zone concept which has been patented by IPS. This technology recognises suspicious behaviour and allows an accurate ‘friend or foe’ recognition to be carried out.
IPS Critical Infrastructure Protection also offers a high degree of protection to the edge devices. For example, it detects camera tampering attempts, and can identify attacks which include masking or defocusing the cameras.
Environmental stability is ensured as the system can be adjusted using special filters to eliminate typical nuisance activations such as activity caused by small animals and birds, global scene changes such as illumination, shadows and clouds, etc.. This high level of configuration enables precise and reliable detection of attacks against critical infrastructures, even when difficult weather conditions or challenging light levels exist.
Installation and configuration is straightforward, and ensures a good degree of alarm management and filtering. This ensures the technology is suitable for outdoor applications.
The application combines the functionality of IPS Tamper Detection, IPS Loitering Detection and IPS Outdoor Detection. Video image analysis techniques are based on machine learning technology to guarantee a low false alarm rate. Filters include object size, object direction, object distance, object speed, object dwell time, perspective and application variants, along with 3D georeferencing.
