A new kind of growing pain
VIEVU is a leading manufacturer of body-worn cameras for law enforcement, partnering with more than 4,000 police agencies in the US. These cameras allow officers to record hands-free video and audio from their point of view with one motion, which helps to prevent confrontational situations and to improve evidence documentation.
Though body-worn cameras have many benefits, the growing push to record more officer interactions with citizens creates a new challenge: how do you manage and store all that data? One officer alone can generate up to a terabyte of files in a year, and the thousands of VIEVU customers generated more than 10 million hours of video collectively in 2014.
Law-enforcement agencies often don’t have the information technology infrastructure, budget, or staff to handle large amounts of data. And while the cloud offers a promising solution, agencies hadn’t been able to explore it in the past due to strict federal security privacy guidelines. Knowing this, VIEVU sought a storage solution they could provide to customers to help cure internal IT headaches while maintaining compliance standards.
A more compliant cloud
In early 2015, VIEVU worked with Microsoft to implement a data storage solution with Microsoft Azure Government, a cloud platform that offers storage, networking, and identity management services with world-class security. Officers first transfer their videos to VIEVU’s VERIPATROL—a highly secured software system that uses an FIPS 140-2–compliant digital signature process to certify video has not been altered—as well as to VIEVU’s VidLock Security Suite to prevent unauthorized access if the camera is lost or stolen.
Using VERIPATROL, officers can make comments and add case numbers, then upload footage directly to the VERIPATROL Cloud powered by Azure Government. The data is then stored in compliance with the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) standards.
"Most of our customers have been storing data locally because until now, no remote storage solution was compliant with strict federal security and privacy guidelines,” says Joe Pioli, Director of Sales at VIEVU. “Azure Government is the first hyperscale commercial cloud to meet CJIS compliance standards and agreements, and we’re thrilled about the possibilities this opens up for our customers.”
Azure Government servers are physically isolated from other Microsoft data centers to provide an additional layer of security for VIEVU customers’ sensitive information. The servers are also on US soil and maintained by screened US citizens, two requirements outlined in CJIS policies.
“Microsoft Azure is a great complement to our VIEVU cameras and VERIPATROL software,” says Pioli. “We’re migrating the majority of our 4,000 customers to the cloud so they can manage, view, share, and store video footage with a convenient, scalable solution that meets regulatory requirements.”
Scalable storage, empowered officers
By storing video data in the cloud, law-enforcement agencies can unload the heavy burden of infrastructure administration and let agencies spend less time dealing with complex IT processes—and more time focusing on public safety.
Agencies are also seeing cost savings because they no longer have to pay for additional local storage to accommodate growing demand. Previously, law-enforcement agencies had to invest frequently in more storage for large events that required fleets of on-site officers, such as the Super Bowl. VERIPATROL Cloud offers extensive scalability to meet the fluctuating needs police departments may face, allowing agencies to store vast amounts of data without having to worry about storage space.
Even more important, VIEVU is giving officers and law-enforcement agencies the peace of mind of knowing their sensitive footage is protected and compliant with government standards.
“We’ve seen police departments reduce use-of-force incidents by as much as 70 percent with our body-worn cameras,” says Pioli. “We hope this partnership with Microsoft to use Azure Government will help police departments everywhere access and employ these cameras more easily to drive lasting changes in public safety.”
About Microsoft Azure Government
Microsoft Azure Government is a community cloud for US state, local, tribal, and federal government agencies hosted in Microsoft datacenters located in the US and managed by screened US personnel.
For more information, please visit
http://www.microsoft.com/government.