Are your CCTV systems working right now? It’s a pretty simple question but in reality a difficult one to answer. There’s often no quick way of knowing if remote CCTV systems are operating as expected, which is where CheckMyCCTV can help.
In many cases faults are often only discovered when an incident occurs that has not been recorded, and by then it is too late.
We wanted to discover how many sites had typical faults or issues which were undetected. So with the help of our customers, we gathered statistics from a sample of 300 sites and included only the initial test result to represent of the state of the CCTV system prior to using CheckMyCCTV.
The results were surprising, 75% of all units tested had at least one issue which affected operational performance requirements as highlighted in the UK POLICE REQUIREMENTS FOR DIGITAL CCTV SYSTEMS document.
45% of units were recording for less than 31 days.
31% of units had the time set more than 1 hour fast/slow.
24% of units had the incorrect Timezone/Daylight Savings time configured.
16% of units had one or more failed cameras.
6% of units had problems with Alarms not activating.
2% of units were not recording at all.
Fortunately, CheckMyCCTV identified these issues and they were rectified by the installer. However, without using CheckMyCCTV it may have been several months before the issues were noticed, leaving a critical security gap in the users CCTV coverage.
It seems that there are plenty of documented cases where CCTV systems have been installed and are assumed to be working, but were not. I quickly found a number of examples by entering ‘faulty CCTV’ into Google search:
CCTV cameras weren’t working during Digbeth club shooting
Blackburn town centre CCTV cameras ‘faulty’
Quarter of council’s CCTV cameras not working
There were many more listed in the search results, and along with the Van Gogh painting which was stolen from Cairo Museum which I wrote about in a previous blog, it seems that faulty or incorrectly configured CCTV systems may not be as uncommon as first thought.
Want to find out if your CCTV systems are operating correcting? CheckMyCCTV automatically performs a number of checks on all your CCTV installations every day to ensure you systems are operating as expected. Contact us today at sales@nullcheckmysystems.com to trial CheckMyCCTV FREE for 14-days.