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Banking on surveillance, AI and analytics

The banking sector has been attempting to convert as much of its business as possible away from the physical site of the local branch and instead move over to remote transactions with clients. Then 2020 arrived and brought with it the greatest societal paradigm shift since World War 2 when COVID hit the planet and in doing so it accelerated this approach of a more remote interaction with customers faster than the sector could ever have foreseen on New Year’s morning of 2020.

As is well-known to the financial sector, along with all the obvious cost-saving benefits of this remote model of banking comes the increase in potential data breaches and cyber-attacks. And, as of July 1st 2021 in South Africa, a whole multitude of new legal and regulatory consequences in the event of such a data breach will appear in the form of PoPIA.

However, COVID’s main effect was obviously felt in the realm of the real and the physical. Masks, social distancing, occupancy levels and temperature monitoring are elements of life here to stay with us for a fair while longer.

In addition, pre-COVID banks already had significant physical security issues they were addressing, some age-old, some new, all generally to do with those two eternal banking sector woes of theft and fraud.

What are the solutions?

In terms of the security challenges presented by COVID’s new normal, the CathexisVision suite of COVID-orientated security measures can help: mask detection capabilities, people counting analytics, social distancing detection and thermal camera integrations to monitor temperatures of people entering and exiting the building, all provide powerful surveillance-based solutions to the quotidian COVID-related security concerns that banks need to tackle currently.

Although COVID still steals the limelight to an extent, the pre-COVID banking security threats still exist with as much force as ever. CathexisVision, with its open-platform and full integration capabilities provides a sophisticated video surveillance solution to assist banks and financial institutions in facing these challenges.

Apart from a sophisticated video management environment, CathexisVision third-party system integrations allow for systems like money-counters, fire alarm panels, access control, ATMs and other third-party products to be integrated into the system to provide a single user interface for operators, thereby dramatically increasing the effectiveness of the solution.

The CathexisVision suite of video analytics, using AI (deep learning) further enhance the solution. For example, algorithms detect loitering (near an ATM), queue lengths, object detection and classification (for instance determining whether the object is an abandoned bag, a person, or an animal), as well as provide people counting technologies which provides valuable information for analysing banking trends, customer service and people flow.

Advanced smart video analytics can also trigger the system to carry out defined actions such as notifying the control room gateway, moving the PTZ camera to a pre-set position, sending an alarm or SMS/email to a selected recipient, or switching devices on or off. Furthermore, all of this can be monitored remotely from a centralised control room, with off-site and multi-site monitoring and alarm management. Cathexis can also provide facial recognition solutions (for instance of known syndicates and ‘bad actors’ in an area).

Multiple vendor camera support allows hundreds (or even thousands) of strategically placed cameras on site to be scrutinised easily by a few operators, using the CathexisVision software analytics ‘view on demand’ alarm management gateway and video wall from a secured control room.

Exceptionally fast search capabilities assist in finding video footage evidence in a searchable database, quickly and efficiently, if needed in the event of an investigation. Smart analytics also keep nuisance alarms to a minimum, saving time and hassle. Technical alarms are also available in the event of camera tampering. For larger sites, the CathexisVision virtual patrol capability facilitates security being taken care of from a remote monitoring control room. Sophisticated health monitoring of the entire system’s components – both hardware and software integrity – assists in allowing for timely corrective maintenance.

All these CathexisVision video surveillance capabilities and smart video analytics and more, help detect and cut fraud-based events and their resulting losses as well as facilitate the gathering of consumer data on customer trends and other business- and consumer-related intelligence.

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