Standard Life is a long term savings and investment company headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. Established in 1825, Standard Life provides life assurance, pensions, investment management, banking and healthcare insurance ...

Standard Life is a long term savings and investment company headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. Established in 1825, Standard Life provides life assurance, pensions, investment management, banking and healthcare insurance products to over 6.5 million customers worldwide. The Group has around 10,000 employees across the UK, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Austria, India, USA, Hong Kong and mainland China.

Within the UK Standard Life has a significant estate of managed properties including prestigious office locations such as London’s iconic Gherkin building. The safety and security of staff, customers and data throughout these locations is vital to the company. To provide continuous surveillance across the property estate Standard Life has employed a comprehensive package of measures including Visimetrics FASTAR Digital Video Recorders. FASTAR has been deployed using a distributed recording model enabling the storage of high quality images locally while keeping bandwidth usage over the corporate network to a minimum.

On demand access for incident investigation at each remote site is available for authorised users directly from Standard Life’s own Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) in Edinburgh. This “distributed recording” approach to DVR deployment ensures the most of efficient use of the network whilst offering a high degree of fault tolerance. Should the network be unavailable or operating at reduced capacity, the ability to record data and provide evidence locally continues without interruption.

Standard Life has used Visimetrics DVR systems throughout there property estate for many years with FASTAR representing the third generation of DVR sourced from the company. From the outset the deployment of Visimetrics DVR’s within Standard Life properties required network integration as an essential feature. In addition to meeting the security department’s requirements for image quality, ease of use and provision of secure, auditable evidence, the DVR’s and associated Video Management “CONTROL” software also had to meet the group’s stringent network security requirements. Standard Life’s Security Manager, Clive Teague confirms “We knew the progression to a networked CCTV system would be complex and without the early commitment of our IT department achieving the solution we wanted would not be feasible. To succeed it was essential we selected a manufacturer we could work closely with to meet the security and IT needs of the company. Visimetrics have been solid partner in delivering and evolving systems to provide us with the essential tools in monitoring our property estate” 

All hardware and software associated with the Digital Video Recorders was thoroughly tested and verified by Standard Life’s IT department before approval was granted for deployment across the corporate network. Visimetrics product development team worked closely with Standard Life’s IT department to ensure all aspects of the products network performance were fully compliant to their stringent requirements allowing the addition of further sites and DVR’s to become a standard procedure worldwide.

More recently, Standard Life has invested in a purpose built Alarm Receiving Centre to monitor the Access Control, BMS, Fire and Intruder Alarms and CCTV across there property estate. To simplify the monitoring of such a diverse range of equipment required a Security Management System GUI (Graphical User Interface). This reduced the onus on the operators from managing multiple software applications down to a single application providing a graphically representation on the overall security status of the property estate. Alarms generated at the individual sites are displayed within the Security Management System enabling operators to visually verify the alarm source using FASTAR. This level of integration is achieved via Visimetrics Software Development Kit (SDK) to provide direct access to both live and recorded images for display within the Security Management System.

Network Rail has awarded Visimetrics a Certificate of Acceptance for the FASTAR and VADER ranges of Digital Video Recorder. This certification means that FASTAR and VADER is accepted for use across Network Rail's infrastructure ...

Network Rail has awarded Visimetrics a Certificate of Acceptance for the FASTAR and VADER ranges of Digital Video Recorder. This certification means that FASTAR and VADER is accepted for use across Network Rail's infrastructure including CCTV security systems at surface stations.

Footage from Visimetrics FASTAR Digital Evidence Recorders has been used by the Metropolitan Police’s Clubs and Vice Unit to assist in the recent conviction of two Poker cheats, who were arrested in May 2009 at the London ...

Footage from Visimetrics FASTAR Digital Evidence Recorders has been used by the Metropolitan Police’s Clubs and Vice Unit to assist in the recent conviction of two Poker cheats, who were arrested in May 2009 at the London Clubs Casino at the Empire, Leicester Square.

During two visits to the Casino, a total of 7 cheat moves were noted by surveillance staff and also recorded by the FASTAR DER. Real Time footage from both fixed and PTZ cameras was handed to the police on movie format DVD, extracted directly from the recorders. The footage was shown to the suspects during interview and both subsequently pleaded guilty to cheating at gambling when they appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in June.

Doug Reeman, London Clubs Head of Security comments “the clarity of the images we obtained from FASTAR undoubtedly contributed to the guilty pleas entered, and underlines the efficacy of both the surveillance team and the technology that backs them up”.

Visimetrics FASTAR Digital Evidence Recorder is in use by various Casino operators worldwide and this is the first ever conviction for this offence under the Gambling Act 2005, to be obtained in the UK.

Kent Police have transformed the forces ageing isolated Custody CCTV systems into a force-wide network based Custody CCTV solution utilising Visimetrics FASTAR and VADER Digital Evidence Recorders®. Visimetrics Custody CCTV ...

Kent Police have transformed the forces ageing isolated Custody CCTV systems into a force-wide network based Custody CCTV solution utilising Visimetrics FASTAR and VADER Digital Evidence Recorders®. Visimetrics Custody CCTV solution provides Kent Police with real-time video and audio recordings within key areas such as the charge bar’s, intox and fingerprint rooms while maintaining a video only profile in all surrounding custody suite areas. 

The network based CCTV solution from Visimetrics provides a distributed recording platform of local storage servers within each Custody Suite. All authorised users now have force-wide access to any of the 230 cameras from any location on the network using Visimetrics “CONTROL” CCTV management software. Providing a single point of access to all cameras in all Custody Suites to departments such as Professional Standards and TSU has generated significant savings to the force in operational time and costs. 

A substantial gain for the force from the implementation of Visimetrics Custody CCTV solution has been the ability to create “movie” DVD’s of real-time video with lip-synchronised audio directly from within the “CONTROL” application. This process has greatly reduced the onus on the imaging department to transfer data DVD’s into the generic format of playable DVD necessary for the distribution of evidence within the Criminal Justice System.

After taking the project from product evaluation through to final implementation Force CCTV Liaison Officer, Mick White, is satisfied the force made the right choice in adopting his recommendation to implement Visimetrics solution. “I’ve been delighted with Visimetrics recording solution. We now have a secure, standardised, force-wide CCTV system, accessed easily and seamlessly by all appropriate individuals. The quality of evidence we are now recording is exceptional as is the on-going commitment and support from Visimetrics”

City Parking (Glasgow), the LLP parking operation of Glasgow City Council, has adopted a fully integrated IP based CCTV solution from Visimetrics for the control, management and recording of CCTV images throughout the city’s ...

City Parking (Glasgow), the LLP parking operation of Glasgow City Council, has adopted a fully integrated IP based CCTV solution from Visimetrics for the control, management and recording of CCTV images throughout the city’s multi-storey car parks.

The CCTV system upgrade was part of a major refurbishment programme following the transfer of Glasgow City Council’s off-street parking operations to the newly created LLP. The programme’s aim was to improve the efficiency, operation and capability of parking facilities across the city. Central to this aim was bringing the control and operation of all the city council’s parking facilities within one location. With the network capability already in place at head office the Control Room and centralised equipment for parking, intercom, CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) were located there.

The integrated IP CCTV solution was specifically developed by Visimetrics to the meet the operational requirements of City Parking (Glasgow). The integrated solution provides complete automation of camera control and recording profiles based on the activation of intercom, pay station or barrier control help points. An intercom call for assistance to the central Control Room directs an associated camera towards the help point, barrier or pay station. The recording profile for the camera is simultaneously increased for the duration of the intercom activity ensuring the highest possible quality of video and audio content is recorded for incident review and training purposes.  
The integrated solution automatically presents operators with high quality, real-time video upon intercom activation removing the time delays associated with finding and selecting the relevant camera.  Customer service and staff efficiencies are maximised with this automation allowing staff to focus solely on the issue at hand.

Visimetrics “CONTROL” management application provides control room operators with direct access to live and recorded images from any of the 250 cameras located within any of the council’s car parks. Access via the IP network to each of the car park’s distributed recordings systems provides the flexibility of centralised access while minimising bandwidth usage on the council’s corporate network to on-demand periods of access only.

City Parking’s Wayne Myrden commented, “A key aspect in centralising the management of our parking operation was the integration and control of our city wide CCTV system. The design, implementation and on-going support from Visimetrics has been paramount in achieving this. They have taken our requirements and provided a robust, integrated solution across all major car park's within the city."

Cortech Developments Datalog 4 Security Management System now offers full integration with the Visimetrics range of Digital Video Recorders including FASTAR, VADER and OCTAR.

Cortech Developments Datalog 4 Security Management System now offers full integration with the Visimetrics range of Digital Video Recorders including FASTAR, VADER and OCTAR.

When an alarm occurs on Cortech's Datalog SMS cameras can be associated with a circuit and switched to a preset.  The alarm event can be replayed on the Datalog SMS screen to show pre and post video verification.  Historic replay of events is also available together with manual camera selection for replay and live.

Datalog SMS camera icons can be dragged from the Datalog SMS map and dropped on to the video replay window for reviewing recorded images or viewing live cameras. If PTZ cameras are connected to the DVR on-screen PTZ control is available via the Datalog SMS screen. 

Datalog can monitor Visimetrics DVR's for video loss, disk failure, temperature and input alarms.