A few things you might want to think about on cloud storage
Does it seem, sometimes, that technology has always led the race? Problems arise, solutions are created, but there’s always a jump—or a leap—over an issue with the latest new trend. During these technological leaps, however, there are always questions to discuss. It’s those issues that sit in second place that are vital to talk about and catch-up to what our innovative selves are capable of accomplishing.
That’s where we are today—discussing policy, legal issues, standardization, and federal mandates for technological advancements like body-worn cameras.
On May 1, the Department of Justice announced $20 million in funding to support body-worn camera programs. According to the release, “the pilot program is part of President Obama’s proposal to invest $75 million over three years to purchase 50,000 body-body cameras for law enforcement agencies.”
- $17 million in competitive grants
- $2 million for training and technical assistance
- $1 million for development of evaluation tools to discover best practices
Think about those numbers for a moment: 50,000 new cameras. That’s hardly a camera for every officer in the country, but the statistics in data creation are astounding. If you’re hosting your own evidence server for your agency you know what this could potentially mean: turn on the fan, upgrade, and purchase more space—your server is about to fill up. Not to mention the need to do all that again in a few years. That’s more space, newer equipment, and additional security all burning through your budget faster.
With more consumers adopting software like iTunes and Google-based products, the concept of cloud storage has became more viable for law enforcement. With body-worn cameras building popularity, the idea seemingly comes just in time. Officer Burke from the Oakland (Calif.) Police Department says they began their pilot program with 20 Vievu cameras and ran it for close to a year. Then in 2010 they moved to full deployment, and now have grown to 565 cameras. With an end-game to have each officer assigned to a camera, that’s roughly 719 cameras from the chief down. “It is a lot of data. Right now [from] the length of the program we accumulated 106 terabytes worth of video,” says Burke. Put this into perspective, the department recorded 57 terabytes of data just this past year alone.
While their current solution was able to handle the growth, Burke saw troubled waters when he considered storing all the future data created in their in-house servers. He originally built off of their existing in-car video solution with 80 terabytes and added 60 more to accommodate. This handled the pilot, and the pilot alone. Knowing data-creation could increase exponentially, he kept an eye out for solutions. With Microsoft announcing their Government Azure product in January 2015 he found one. Amazon’s Web Service, known through Taser’s Evidence.com, is another avenue that alleviates pressure from law enforcement with data storage issues.
The consumer industry has travelled this conceptual highway. “[What] these police forces are going through is no different than what a normal organization that’s looking to migrate into the cloud [goes through],” says Joe Pedano, SVP of Evolve IP. “This has morphed into…‘What does the on-ramp to the cloud look like’?”
Bandwidth
Burke suggests knowing how your bandwidth will be affected. Once your officers start uploading and downloading, will your connection offer enough speed to be efficient? Communicate with providers and discuss. Media companies, for example, may choose to throttle their connection and pay for higher bandwidth speeds for “peak times.” The recordings of more than 700 cameras would be a challenge to handle each day, but Burke figures not every camera will be uploaded at once, instead after the various shifts throughout the day/night.
Space
“Law enforcement is deploying more cameras than ever before. They are recording more than ever before. Even upgrading from standard to high definition can increase the file size to a factor of four or five,” says Richard Zak, lead of the Justice Public Safety Solutions for State and Local Government of Microsoft.
A cost-analysis from the City of San Antonio, Texas, estimates “an officer will generate approximately three hours (2.7 gigabytes) of video per day.” They extrapolate this with their 251 body cameras and see an increase of data creation by 33 percent. Using Oakland PD’s example, if one year created 57 terabytes of video: how long are you keeping those terabytes as evidence?
How quickly will you run out of space in your local server?
The cloud, one other hand, offers a near at-infinitum expansion (with a fee) of storage capability—not to mention the ability to backup at multiple locations for redundancy.
Access
“The next thing we’re going to look at is how do we share that information,” he says. Currently Oakland PD burns DVDs for the court and share videos with key players like the district attorney’s office, the public defender, city attorney’s office, etc. Burke says that is one of the things he’s interested in testing to eliminate that process.
Security and management
Pedano suggests agencies “look inwards to figure out what posture makes sense for them. From a security [and] compliance perspective, what requirements are being placed on them? What do they need to seek out? Are they subject to a third party compliance?”
“Do your research,” Burke adds. “Know where your data will be stored. At the end of the day you want to own your data, you want to make sure your data is secure and not have that liability of that data being breached—so you’ve got to have that sense of security. But, here’s the flip side: Your in-house storage solution could also be hacked if that’s what you’re concerned about. On the other side, you’re paying for the security services alone and the security should give you peace of mind.”
Michael Coppola, President and CSO at CJIS Solutions, considers in-house servers completely different when compared with a cloud-based storage. He lists that some of the hidden costs of the local server could include management, maintenance, replacing/upgrading equipment, and any backup systems, among others. “By the time you did all that, you could have cut your budget in half by putting it in the cloud environment,” he says.
Some solutions are already on the market, but adhering to the same standards and regulations as all law enforcement agencies are can be an expense few have been willing to take on. For example, CJIS Solutions, Microsoft’s Azure Government, Taser’s Evidence.com, and Evolve IP all report to be CJIS-compliant—Amazon however requires signing a non-disclosure agreement if you want further information on their security.
“There’s CJIS-compliance and there’s not,” says Coppola. Make this discussion one of the first conversations you have if cloud storage is on your horizon.
“Policy in a lot of places is catching up to the deployment of tech,” says Zak. “As video becomes a larger piece of what [police departments] do, they’re recognizing that they are having to put more smart people and more capital assets against an important function.”
Taser Founder and CEO Rick Smith agrees, “It turns out that the people who write software are better at running it than anyone else in the world.”
In the end, isn’t that peace of mind what you would be paying for?
Jonathan Kozlowski
Jonathan Kozlowski was with Officer.com, Law Enforcement Technology, and Law Enforcement Product News from August 2006 to 2020.
As former Managing Editor for Officer Media Group, he brought a dedicated focus to the production of the print publications and management of the Officer.com online product and company directory. You can connect with Jonathan through LinkedIn.
Jonathan participated as a judge for the 2019 and 2020 FOLIO: Eddie & Ozzie Awards. In 2012, he received an APEX Award of Excellence in the Technology & Science Writing category for his article on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in police work, aptly titled "No Runway Needed".
