How Visium Networks Delivers Compliance and DR Simplicity for Video Surveillance Clients

Visium Networks provides safety solutions to over a thousand corporate customers throughout Australia and New Zealand. Founded in 2000, Visium Networks has expanded from offering complex IP video alarm access control systems to remote video monitoring, video alarm verification of alarm events, and E-guarding, which can replace static guards at logistics facilities. The company supports its customers with a 24/7 network operations center (NOC.) Visium Networks’ business generates enormous amounts of video data, some of which must now be stored away from client sites to comply with the local data security requirements. This requirement creates logistical and business challenges for the company.   

Challenge: Deliver Offsite DR That’s Simple and Consistently Priced 

Some of Visium Networks’ biggest customers recently faced new regulations requiring them to store security surveillance video files offsite for disaster recovery (DR) purposes. Previously, Australian businesses in industries like mining, waste disposal, and logistics were required by law to preserve the last 90 days’ worth of security video onsite as well as storing 30 days of video offsite. Soon, the regulations will mandate offsite storage of 90 days of video data.  

Jason Farmer, Visium Networks’ Managing Director, put the issue in perspective, saying, “Having a fire at, say, a waste plant that might contain dangerous chemicals, and not knowing what caused it, or how it spread, is not an auspicious situation for our customers.”   

In theory, providing offsite storage for security video files is not difficult. However, the technical and commercial practicalities make compliance a challenge for Visium Networks and its customers. The customers want to comply with the law without paying a lot to store files they would only access in an emergency. Nor did they want to take on additional administrative overhead for handling files “out of sight, out of mind.”  

Visium Networks, conversely, aimed to create an inexpensive, variably priced offsite storage offering with simple account management. Farmer said, “We wanted to offer an offsite storage solution for our customers, but it couldn’t add headcount, and the pricing had to be straightforward. It would not work to have charges for data access and data egress, like, ‘Oh, you needed 10 gigabytes of video this month—here’s your invoice.’”  

Additionally, the offsite DR video storage solution needed to align with customer-site video processing and analysis workflows. A single customer might have hundreds of cameras. The offsite video file management system had to consider such parameters to enable efficient location, viewing, and restoration of video files.     

Solution: Wasabi Surveillance Cloud  

Visium Networks selected Wasabi Surveillance Cloud as the core of its offsite DR solution for customers who needed to comply with the 30-day offsite storage regulation. Visium Network’s customers could archive 30 days’ worth of surveillance offsite without expending much effort.  The solution enables Visium Networks to provide compliant offsite storage at a fixed price. Wasabi realizes this outcome by charging one price for the service, with no fees for API access or data egress.   

The Wasabi Account Control Manager (WACM) keeps admin costs down by giving Visium Networks a simple way to allocate storage capacity to its customers, manage users, and assign storage admin roles for each account.  

The storage is high-performing, so no matter how much 4K video customers’ cameras generate, it moves efficiently into offsite storage. Wasabi also maps to customers’ camera setups by integrating with Network Optix’s Nx Witness video management system (VMS). Nx Witness allows users to discover, view, record, and manage IP video cameras and quickly react to critical events. Farmer noted, “NX Witness saves the video down to the minute. You see the folder structure, so it’s easy to browse to the correct location and then download the correct file.”

Farmer added, “How many MAC addresses or camera IPs you have—doesn’t matter. Some of our customers have a hundred cameras at each of their sites. That’s a lot of video, considering it’s flowing 24/7. With Wasabi Surveillance Cloud, we don’t have to worry about it getting stored—and we know we can easily find the video for any camera when we need it.”  

The system had to be simple to use, too. As Farmer said, “Even if we end up with 500 clients that have got Wasabi with data in the cloud, we’d want to be able to have a simple video or a simple set of instructions they can follow to access their data because the need to view or restore video could come up in the middle of the night on a Saturday or Sunday for emergency services.”  

“We wanted to offer an offsite surveillance storage solution for our customers, but it couldn’t add headcount. The pricing had to be straightforward. It would not work to have charges for data access and data egress, like, ‘Oh, you needed 10 gigabytes of video this month—here’s your invoice.’” 

– Jason Farmer, Managing Director of Visium Networks 

Simple, Manageable, and Compliant Disaster Recovery 

Wasabi Surveillance Cloud allows Visium Networks to make its customers compliant with new video disaster recovery regulations. Visium Networks can now deliver a DR video solution that features 24/7, 99.999% uptime. The solution is both easy and efficient to manage.  

The service is also consistently priced. Customers never get a surprise bill for accessing archived video material. Working this way removes some challenges Visium Networks faced in selling the solution to its customers. The video data in question will rarely be accessed, so if the solution is perceived as costly or cumbersome to deal with, in financial terms, that would be an obstacle to selling it. With Wasabi, Visium Networks does not have to worry about this problem.  

Farmer remarked, “We just wanted something straightforward in the way we pay for it and easy to charge the customer—and make a profit—without any complexity in ongoing invoices and measuring and having software to measure how many times people access it and how much video they download and data they shift around because then it becomes a chore with us.” Wasabi takes away all of those difficulties. 

What’s Next?

Visium Networks is poised to offer the Wasabi-based offsite DR solution to more clients who seek regulation-compliant solutions. And, as the rules change to require 90-day offsite storage, Visium Networks will likely adapt the solution to meet this criterion.