Security Aspect of the Complexity of Modern Surveillance Systems – An Experience Report

Growing social insecurity makes monitoring of public places a modern day necessity. As a consequence, the popularity of public surveillance systems increases. The security of such surveillance systems plays a critical role as their compromise has both a technical and social impact. On the other hand, the complexity of surveillance systems is growing as the system architecture and application has to fulfil various requirements of ever demanding project scenarios. This paper concentrates on the security issues of modern surveillance systems, highlighting the complex security issues involved with heterogeneity of hosting networks, storage sub-systems and various requirements for the development of software application. We begin with explaining the techniques used in video surveillance, whilst providing basic understanding of the functions and demands of monitoring applications. In order to develop a secure surveillance system it is essential to fully understand the main security risks and have knowledge of probable attacks on these systems. A review of security threats is given. We propose the classification of security issues at various architectural levels including a review of the mechanisms to be applied. Based on this, classification the deployment examples are provided. The introduction of the main factors building up the complexity is provided and the list of security risks encountered during the implementation is given. We will also propose the overview of possible solutions and provide a general conclusion on the security of future surveillance systems.