5 Power Plant Camera Tips To Secure Your Facility
The Energy Industry plays a critical role in our nation’s economy, driving industrial growth and ensuring the health and welfare of our communities by providing electricity to our homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals. For that reason, energy and power plants must be protected from physical threats, such as intruders trying to gain access, and cyberattacks, which are projected to cause millions of dollars in damages in the coming years. Advanced technologies, including integrated surveillance systems and high-resolution cameras, can provide the security that is necessary to keep energy infrastructure safe. With just a few simple camera tips, your power plant security will be improved. With that being said, the need for critical infrastructure surveillance continues to grow.
Maximize Your Security Profile With Video Surveillance Cameras
Energy facilities are the critical infrastructure of our communities. They face multiple challenges to their security, including damage to critical equipment or a malicious cyberattack. Minimizing these risks is important to avoid service disruption on a national scale. Improving the safety of these production facilities is a top priority, and the sector must deploy proactive security measures that level advances in technology across various systems to help anticipate, identify, and mitigate threats across their operations.
In addition to physical security measures, real-time video surveillance solutions coupled with advanced data analytics can strengthen security protocols and optimize facility operations. But in order to get the most benefit from your surveillance system, remember these power plant camera tips:
- Place cameras along the perimeter of your facility – the outermost perimeter of a power plant should be secured with a physical barrier like fencing, with controlled access points for entry and exit. Additionally, the fencing should be monitored with high-definition video surveillance equipment to monitor activity and deter unauthorized entry to the facility.
- Place cameras at all entrance and exit points – in addition to physical barriers, all access points should be monitored with surveillance equipment to record who is entering and exiting the facility.
- Position the cameras strategically – where you place your surveillance cameras matter. Walk the perimeter to determine where your cameras should be mounted, and install them so that they provide overlapping coverage to the areas you want to monitor. Do the same with your interior cameras; make sure they are positioned so that you see the same area from different angles and that no blind spots exist.
- Install cameras up high – as simple as this sounds, installing cameras at a height that is difficult to make deters criminals from disabling your surveillance system. This simple trick ensures that your technology is tamper-proof.
- Don’t forget secluded areas – install cameras in areas that are secluded, or that have restricted access. This allows you to monitor activity and determine if security needs to be dispatched. If the area is dark, add lighting so your camera can pick up images, or consider using thermal cameras that can read heat signatures and do not require additional lighting.
The Benefits Of Technology For the Energy Industry
Energy and Power Plants today must contend with a much wider range of threats than they were previously accustomed to. It’s no longer just about guarding against intruders on foot; now, aerial threats must be considered. Some utility companies have begun incorporating drone technology into their perimeter defense, both as a first-response system as well as a countermeasure to unauthorized drones.
When combined with physical security measures, drones, and other technologies, video surveillance systems and power plant cameras provide many benefits, including:
- Reduce loss – surveillance systems can help reduce loss due to theft or vandalism by preventing incidents before they happen.
- Enhance safety – create a safer environment for your staff, customers, and visitors with video surveillance.
- Improve operations – leverage the insights you gather from video surveillance to help increase operational efficiencies.
- Receive alerts – features like motion detection in your cameras will send you real-time notifications, so you can see what is happening and decide on the correct response.
- Document events – access video, images, and long-term archives of your video footage for increased visibility of security events.
The Energy Industry maintains very strict security measures to prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access to the interior of a power plant, where they could damage critical equipment or cause harm to the facility. Still, using video surveillance to enhance the safety measures already in place is a powerful way to ensure that this sector continues to operate without interruption. To learn more about critical infrastructure surveillance options or camera tips for power plants, click here.
Brent Canfield
CEO and Creator of SentryPODSBrent Canfield, CEO, and founder of Smart Digital and SentryPODS, founded Smart Digital in 2007 after completing a nine-year active-duty career with the United States Marine Corps. During the 2016 election cycle, he provided executive protection for Dr. Ben Carson. He has also authored articles for Security Info Watch.