‘Comfort factor of SBD’ as network video specialists Axis Communications moves towards ‘smart cities’

He said Axis Communications is continuing to focus on a wide variety of areas such as critical national infrastructure, retail and transport and has expanded to offer small business owners the opportunity to benefit from professional grade security products.

Having SBD accreditation provides ‘an extra level of comfort factor’ to clients selecting security equipment and video surveillance technology, he explained.

Beyond those sectors is the potential marketplace of creating ‘smart cities’. Although the concept of a smart city remains to be defined, it has the potential to embrace national infrastructure and securing ‘public spheres’, such as city surveillance, shopping centres and transport networks.

Atul explained that Smart Cities are about amalgamating technology in disparate industry sectors but can be raised up to a higher federated level to help improve people’s lives.

Smart cities involves one of the basic tenets in life: that of helping people to feel safe. It also seeks to achieve an improved quality of life and work life balance, such as spending less time in traffic, which not only can reduce pollution, but also help you enjoy more time with your family.

It could also help in the response by authorities to a major incident by enabling integration with different systems from different commercial companies – something that is possible with Axis Communications’ products, which have open standards to work with over-arching architecture.

“The concept of a smart city is to harness all the resources available to make us more efficient and respond more quickly, and I think part of where we are now, and where technology may take us all, makes it important to have a brand you can trust with open standards.”

Atul went on to speak about the Network and Information (NIS) Directive, which is the first piece of EU-wide legislation designed to boost the overall level of cyber security across member states to address critical infrastructure services such as energy, transport, finance and digital infrastructure. Any business that classes itself as an operator of essential services or a digital service provider must ensure compliance or face fines of up to £17m or four percent of annual turnover.

“Having worked with Axis for 20 years, I know the video surveillance industry is a tremendous industry in terms of risk management of people, property and assets.

“But there is a confidence gap in securing the actual device itself in terms of cyber security. We need to raise awareness of the importance of selecting products with strong cyber credentials, and also helping to raise the awareness and improving the confidence levels of installation and maintenance of those systems.”

Atul said SBD accreditation gives an extra level of comfort factor to someone making a decision on what brand to choose for video surveillance. “We are extremely pleased and delighted to have SBD accreditation. As a company we believe it’s important to have independent, external validation,” he added.

About Axis Communications
A market leader in network video, Axis Communications is a global company based in Sweden with UK offices in Luton. The company has nearly 3,000 employees to help meet the needs of 90,000 partners in 179 countries. Since inventing the world’s first network camera from analog to digital technology in 1996, Axis has been an innovator in video surveillance ever since, increasing the security of millions of people worldwide and helping to meet the growing need for a smarter, safer world. Axis network video products are installed in public places and areas such as retail chains, airports, trains, motorways, universities, prisons, casinos and banks. The majority of Axis’ sales are generated by the video product area: network cameras, video encoders, accessories and application software.

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