Real-time remote interactive video monitoring is a proven virtual solution to your business’s physical security needs. Highly trained Command Center Agents connect to your surveillance cameras, security systems, and other infrastructure on your property. Our Virtual Guards can then monitor and intervene in events that occur on your property 24/7/365, having an immediate impact on any situation. Proven to be more effective, efficient, and proactive than traditional physical security guards, real-time interactive remote video monitoring can act as your virtual eyes, ears, and voice, bypassing the limitations of physical guarding.
What is VirtuGuard™ Real-time, Interactive, Remote Video Monitoring?
VirtuGuard™ is a real-time interactive remote monitoring service or virtual guard service offered by BOS Security. From our Command Centers, headquartered in Athens, Georgia, VirtuGuard™ Agents have access to live video surveillance streams and recorded video from your locations through security cameras and other infrastructure installed on your property. This security infrastructure combined with the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies, alerts Agents in our command centers to activity/events as they occur, in near real-time. The Command Center Team then reacts accordingly to your site-specific protocols.
Additionally, VirtuGuard™ services can often completely replace onsite physical guards, providing more effective solutions while saving 40% to as much as 60% or more in costs. At the very least, VirtuGuard™ can certainly supplement onsite security officers by responding to AI created events or by being proactive and conducting scheduled or random virtual remote video patrols of the property and people on site.
VirtuGuard™ interactive video monitoring is a proactive approach to security. Focused on preventing incidents or stopping them in-progress, remote guarding does not just investigate an event after it has already occurred. Prevention results in money saved, your business’s good reputation preserved, and your tenants, employees, and customers feeling safe and satisfied.
Two-way audio is a key feature of remote video monitoring that makes it a proactive approach to security. This feature allows Command Center Agents to monitor onsite audio in addition to monitoring surveillance cameras. More importantly, two-way audio enables Agents to audibly intervene in an incident, actively interacting with people onsite, whether they be customers, trespassers, or suspicious individuals.
How Can VirtuGuard™ Utilize Audio Capabilities?
VirtuGuard™ will work with your team, your business’s IT specialists, and third-party integrators to connect your security systems, including cameras, alarms, and audio speakers, to our Command Centers, where Virtual Agents monitor and respond to events on your property 24/7/365. Both microphones and speakers are effective tools in catching, preventing, and stopping unwanted security events on your property. Our experts will help you implement the most effective, efficient, and affordable operational and site security protocols on an ongoing basis as part of our customer support program.
Benefits of Audio Monitoring for Security
Whether you choose to install surveillance cameras with built-in speakers and microphones or layer a new speaker/microphone system on top of your existing technology, audio monitoring is an effective tool to add to your security arsenal. Audio detection and classification can be used to identify risks occurring on your property that otherwise would not have been captured by cameras alone. Whether it be screams, gunshots, glass breaking, abnormally loud engines, or other audible indications of an incident, audio monitoring adds an extra layer of protection to your virtual security solution.
If you also utilize physical security guards or courtesy officers, audio monitoring can enable onsite officers to be better aware and more in tune with their surroundings before they approach and address an issue. When Command Center Agents are monitoring the audio and video of a property and detect a concern, they can convey details and the exact location of the concern to the onsite professionals.
Audio monitoring enables Command Center Agents and onsite security officers to be notified of incidents in real-time, even if an incident occurs out of camera view. Audio monitoring enhances this proactive approach to security.
In addition to preventing and immediately responding to an incident, audio can be used to support investigations of events after they occur. The addition of sound to a video recording provides further context to incidents and can be used to support legal and internal investigations.
Benefits of Audio Intervention
While audio monitoring can provide an extra layer of security and context in an incident, audio speakers can be utilized to immediately intervene in an incident from our remote Command Center. However, audio speakers are not just limited to security purposes.
VirtuGuard™ Command Center Agents can speak to individuals onsite in real-time, using the site’s audio systems or the Agents can trigger prerecorded messages to broadcast on your property, including greetings to staff, customers, or guests when they enter a business, specialty announcements of instructions, site issues, special events, or ongoing deals for customers and guests, and alerting guests that the site is being actively monitored for safety and convenience. This feature is perfect for retail establishments, residential properties, automotive dealerships, and other commercial businesses.
Clear communication through audio speakers can also help with crime deterrence. If remote video monitoring alerts Command Center Agents to someone trespassing on your property after hours, and Agent can activate a live audio message to direct the individual or individuals to leave the property and return during normal business hours if they are in need of your services.
If Command Center Agents observe suspicious or criminal behavior, like entering a business after hours, looking into cars or windows, getting into altercations, vandalizing property, etc., Agents can immediately engage the suspicious parties. An Agent can instruct unauthorized parties to leave the premises and alert them that they are being monitored and recorded. Additionally, if there is evidence that a crime is in progress, Agents can call onsite security or local law enforcement and warn unauthorized individuals that security or police are on their way to resolve the incident.
Example of Successful Two-Way Audio
One of the many properties protected by VirtuGuard™ is a high-traffic outdoor shopping center in the Atlanta area. Seeking to manage smash and grabs, loitering, panhandling, and other security concerns within their outdoor property, property management elected to implement 24/7/365 remote guarding services with audio capabilities in tandem with onsite BOS Security Officers during business hours. Command Center Agents monitor the exterior of the complex through surveillance cameras and two-way audio, as well as a busy area of the parking lot through one of our Mobile Surveillance Trailers.
Early on a Saturday morning, VirtuGuard™ received an alarm in the Command Center, triggered by AI technology on the Mobile Surveillance Trailer. Command Center Agents immediately began observing the area covered by the cameras, observing three individuals running around the parking lot.
Right after VirtuGuard™ became aware of the activity, one individual appeared to pull out a gun before pointing it at the other two people. After seeing this, a virtual guard immediately activated the strobe lights on the surveillance trailer and initiated the emergency voice down procedure to engage with the individuals. Through the speaker attached to the trailer, an Agent made an audio announcement, saying to the suspects, “To the individuals in the parking lot, you are being live monitored and recorded. Police have been notified and are on their way.”
At the same time, another Agent called local law enforcement, providing details of the location and the activity of the individuals. After hearing the audio warning, all three suspects started running through the parking lot, going in the direction of a Chik-Fila-A. The person who had pulled out the weapon appeared to be chasing the other individuals in that direction.
By the time the police arrived at the site, the three individuals could not be found. However, the Command Center Agents’ immediate intervention through the audio speakers prevented what could have been a violent or even fatal shooting. Had VirtuGuard™ not been able to deter the crime from occurring on our client’s property, a murder or attempted murder could have gone unnoticed until a tenant or customer arrived hours later, which would have a negative impact to the reputations of both the shopping center and the businesses within it.
VirtuGuard™ can increase your customers’ sense of safety when they enter your premises. Greater security measures give you more control of the quality of service and protection you can offer each customer. When inconvenient or even dangerous situations arise, Command Center Agents assigned to your business can react to and resolve a problem as needed.
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Two-Way Audio Enhances Your Remote Video Monitoring Solutions
VirtuGuard™ real-time, interactive, remote video monitoring is the most affordable, effective, efficient and proactive approach to security available today, especially when paired with audio capabilities. Two-way audio empowers remote Command Center Agents to instantly intervene in an unfolding event, to either prevent an incident from occurring or stop it in its tracks.
Interested in learning more about VirtuGuard™ Solutions, including audio security solutions? BOS Security experts can answer your questions. Complete the contact form below or visit this page to request to be connected with a representative.
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