Jeff Ebihara, Founder and President of Rize Solutions, recently discussed a growing challenge facing the tower industry: Security. Tower sites are critical infrastructure but haven’t updated security mechanisms, processes, or procedures in nearly three decades. The overwhelming presence of “daisy-chained” padlocks on gates proves this point.
“The owner of every tower site should question themselves whether the security systems in place, if any, match the importance and critical nature of the network services provided. For example, are first responder/public safety and commercial wireless networks adequately protected at tower sites?” asked Ebihara. “If there’s a theft or vandalism, how does this impact carriers and tower owners financially? And what type of impact could a network outage have on the end-user, especially during a pandemic?”
“The bottom line,” according to Ebihara, “is very little has been done when it comes to securing our telecommunications and public safety infrastructure. The recent, unfortunate murder of cell techs in Jacksonville is evidence of this oversight.”
Rize Solutions has partnered with Avigilon, a Motorola Solutions Inc. company, to provide clients with video analytics, security cameras, video management software and hardware, and access control. Ebihara’s company designs and installs the security and monitoring solution with the help of Avigilon engineers, with all manufacturing based in North America. The security cameras are self-learning (AI), which detects normal movement in an area over time and alleviates traditional problems with monitoring remote sites, like false alerts. The cameras provide high-quality resolution, even at night and send notifications only when unusual motion is detected, so it is not transmitting video continuously. This places a minimal burden on network bandwidth and storage needs while maintaining exceptional image quality.
“The monitoring system is self-learning and looks for activity that is unusual – not incidents generated by weather, animals, or foliage movement. And the system doesn’t have to be monitored 24/7 since notifications are only sent when there’s an atypical situation at a site, which helps eliminate false alerts,” noted Ebihara.
“Beyond access control security, video monitoring is extremely important. If there’s damage to the tower site, video can verify if the cause was a contractor, technician error, an accident, or a malicious act like copper theft or other vandalism. With Avigilon, it’s minutes, not hours to find the event and view the video,” added Ebihara.
The Rize Solutions surveillance system helps customers detect, verify, and act on critical events, using advanced technology such as:
- Avigilon Appearance Search™ Technology: a sophisticated AI search engine that helps the user quickly search and find a person or vehicle of interest and track their route throughout all cameras on a site in near real-time or during investigations.
- Unusual Motion Detection (UMD) Technology: UMD technology continuously learns what typical activity in a scene looks like, and then detects and flags unusual motion. This allows the user to search through large volumes of video faster. UMD technology focuses attention on the atypical events that may need further investigation, reducing hours of work to minutes.
- Self-Learning Video Analytics: Working with ACC™ software, self-learning video analytics notify clients of events that may require further investigation, providing analytic events and alarms that can be managed, viewed, and searched through an intuitive user interface.
“We’re proud to partner with Motorola Solutions Inc. to bring tower owners Avigilon’s advanced security and monitoring services. It’s not just what’s best for our customers, it’s also urgently needed to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure,” said Ebihara.
Founded in 2002, Rize Solutions is certified as a Minority Business Enterprise and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise. Rize Solutions is headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida. For more information on security and monitoring solutions or to contact a representative, visit https://rizembe.com/security-solutions/.
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