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I think the biggest selling point to cloud security cameras is to have a copy of the video not at the location. If your house / business is robbed or burns down

I think the biggest selling point to cloud security cameras is to have a copy of the video not at the location. If your house / business is robbed or burns down you will possibly lose the video. This video could be used to find the theif or arsonist. Ideally it would store video locally, then encrypt it and upload the last minute to the cloud.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Plausibly, yes, though again, large enterprises should be able to handle this internally, especially some of the listed customers here.
- zerkten 6y ago
  There are plenty of use cases, such as the various forms of analysis with ML, which are often only implemented outside the "company firewall" (this idea is antiquated.) Of course, this could and should be handled inside a trusted boundary (I can't think of a better term for today's networks), but in practice security here is fairly immature and people try things when there isn't good governance in place.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    This sounds like general problem of enterprise security. There are no consequences. I can entirely get why a company would outsource IP cameras to a third party cloud, even with storing data on-site. Business runs on contracts. It's entirely normal to contract out everything except your core competencies, if it's cheaper this way. It's how you turn CAPEX, complex OPEX and high risk into simple OPEX and low risk. A contract is in big part a risk shifting tool. This works well in practice... outside IT. The problem is, with IT and data, there's a mismatch between expectations and reality. An enterprise should feel safe buying their video surveillance from Verkada, because between the contract and the legal framework, Verkada should be bankrupt now, and their management possibly facing jail time. That's the part where contracts work as Cover-Your-Ass tool: if you shift risk and liability to outside party, the liability is not on you. However, this only works as long as the other party actually internalizes the risk and liability. Since there are no consequences for mishandling data, operating IT services you're not structurally competent to operate, and eventually having your crown jewels stolen - the contractor doesn't really internalize risk, has no incentive to mitigate it. All this to say: Verkada should go down after this, and their customers should be named and shamed widely - the latter is so that future customers of IT services put more care into vetting companies they contract IT out to. You shouldn't get to CYA with a contract where assumptions around contracting are broken.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  I work in a large enterprise. If my employer were to decide to exclusively store security footage on our own infrastructure, then I would have access to every piece of hardware it’s stored on. The risks associated with that is why every piece of mission critical data where I work is, at a minimum, backed up in a 3rd party facility.
nielsbot 6y ago
Also, convenience: Buy this camera, get access to recordings anywhere over the internet with nearly zero setup time. If you have an on-site system (like I do) it's way more effort for the average consumer.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  That's not security, that's voyeurism
  - vincnetas 6y ago
    Was also thinking the same. Security cameras should be used where there is an incident and additional information is needed to clarify what happened. Then you check the security camera footage to figure out what happened. If there were no incidents there is not reasonable need for anyone to look at that footage. edit: not talking here about active monitoring security cameras used by guards.
ma2rten 6y ago
Another one is that you can run machine learning on it. For example to automatically detect unusual activity.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  You can absolutely run machine learning on-premise hardware.
brk 6y ago
The biggest selling point is really the OPEX sales model, and outsourcing of the general care-and-feeding of the recorders/servers. The tradeoff is that you tend to get lesser quality video and/or less scalability of the size of the system from bandwidth limitations. Theft of recorders/loss of recorded video is much much less of an issue than it is generally made out to be, and most systems have various means for auto backups, dual recording, etc. Many also have the ability to send select segments of video, based on motion or analytics, to cloud/FTP/email for free, which adds some extra resiliency if you are really worried about random arsonists :) (I work in the industry)
- pdimitar 6y ago
  > (I work in the industry) Ohhhh, you are so in trouble now! :P I am pondering moving to a rather remote estate with my wife but we're both city kids and have zero clue how to defend ourselves in such conditions (I am even thinking we should take shooting lessons and bring guns to the estate as well). Part of our plan is a surveillance system -- I planned to have an on-site ZFS storage cluster with several cameras that periodically encrypts the last 5 minutes and sends them off-site. Not sure how complex such a setup might turn out to be though... Maybe there's a way to make the storage cluster itself auto-replicate remotely often enough? I'm not that educated yet. Do you have any recommendations? I don't want to spend $5000 due to paranoia but I don't want to be defenseless in case of a robbery either. What's the middle ground?
  - brk 6y ago
    This isn't a short conversation, but you can contact me offline and I can give you some pointers.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      Pinged you on twitter several hours ago, as I can't find any other accounts in your HN profile and don't want to stalk by looking you up online.
  - bigbillheck 6y ago

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Plausibly, yes, though again, large enterprises should be able to handle this internally, especially some of the listed customers here.

zerkten 6y ago
There are plenty of use cases, such as the various forms of analysis with ML, which are often only implemented outside the "company firewall" (this idea is antiquated.) Of course, this could and should be handled inside a trusted boundary (I can't think of a better term for today's networks), but in practice security here is fairly immature and people try things when there isn't good governance in place.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  This sounds like general problem of enterprise security. There are no consequences. I can entirely get why a company would outsource IP cameras to a third party cloud, even with storing data on-site. Business runs on contracts. It's entirely normal to contract out everything except your core competencies, if it's cheaper this way. It's how you turn CAPEX, complex OPEX and high risk into simple OPEX and low risk. A contract is in big part a risk shifting tool. This works well in practice... outside IT. The problem is, with IT and data, there's a mismatch between expectations and reality. An enterprise should feel safe buying their video surveillance from Verkada, because between the contract and the legal framework, Verkada should be bankrupt now, and their management possibly facing jail time. That's the part where contracts work as Cover-Your-Ass tool: if you shift risk and liability to outside party, the liability is not on you. However, this only works as long as the other party actually internalizes the risk and liability. Since there are no consequences for mishandling data, operating IT services you're not structurally competent to operate, and eventually having your crown jewels stolen - the contractor doesn't really internalize risk, has no incentive to mitigate it. All this to say: Verkada should go down after this, and their customers should be named and shamed widely - the latter is so that future customers of IT services put more care into vetting companies they contract IT out to. You shouldn't get to CYA with a contract where assumptions around contracting are broken.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
I work in a large enterprise. If my employer were to decide to exclusively store security footage on our own infrastructure, then I would have access to every piece of hardware it’s stored on. The risks associated with that is why every piece of mission critical data where I work is, at a minimum, backed up in a 3rd party facility.

nielsbot 6y ago

Also, convenience: Buy this camera, get access to recordings anywhere over the internet with nearly zero setup time. If you have an on-site system (like I do) it's way more effort for the average consumer.

andrewprock 6y ago
That's not security, that's voyeurism
- vincnetas 6y ago
  Was also thinking the same. Security cameras should be used where there is an incident and additional information is needed to clarify what happened. Then you check the security camera footage to figure out what happened. If there were no incidents there is not reasonable need for anyone to look at that footage. edit: not talking here about active monitoring security cameras used by guards.

ma2rten 6y ago

Another one is that you can run machine learning on it. For example to automatically detect unusual activity.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
You can absolutely run machine learning on-premise hardware.

brk 6y ago

The biggest selling point is really the OPEX sales model, and outsourcing of the general care-and-feeding of the recorders/servers. The tradeoff is that you tend to get lesser quality video and/or less scalability of the size of the system from bandwidth limitations. Theft of recorders/loss of recorded video is much much less of an issue than it is generally made out to be, and most systems have various means for auto backups, dual recording, etc. Many also have the ability to send select segments of video, based on motion or analytics, to cloud/FTP/email for free, which adds some extra resiliency if you are really worried about random arsonists :) (I work in the industry)

pdimitar 6y ago
> (I work in the industry) Ohhhh, you are so in trouble now! :P I am pondering moving to a rather remote estate with my wife but we're both city kids and have zero clue how to defend ourselves in such conditions (I am even thinking we should take shooting lessons and bring guns to the estate as well). Part of our plan is a surveillance system -- I planned to have an on-site ZFS storage cluster with several cameras that periodically encrypts the last 5 minutes and sends them off-site. Not sure how complex such a setup might turn out to be though... Maybe there's a way to make the storage cluster itself auto-replicate remotely often enough? I'm not that educated yet. Do you have any recommendations? I don't want to spend $5000 due to paranoia but I don't want to be defenseless in case of a robbery either. What's the middle ground?
- brk 6y ago
  This isn't a short conversation, but you can contact me offline and I can give you some pointers.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    Pinged you on twitter several hours ago, as I can't find any other accounts in your HN profile and don't want to stalk by looking you up online.
- bigbillheck 6y ago