Choosing Security Camera Analytics: Start with Goals, Not Features

Artificial Intelligence is improving security camera analytics with new AI-powered features like facial recognition, license plate recognition, object detection, and more. But more isn’t always better. 

An effective security strategy is one that’s intentional about selecting the right analytics for your security needs, rather than enabling every available analytic. Below are a few tips from our team of experts for how to optimize your security camera analytics. 

1. Define your security goals

Before enabling any camera analytics, determine the following:

• What problem am I trying to solve?
• What insights will improve security and operations?
• Which analytics will provide actionable data?

For example, a retail store concerned with theft may benefit from loitering detection, while a warehouse looking to improve efficiency might prioritize object counting or traffic flow analysis. 

If you enable every possible analytic without a clear goal, you risk overwhelming your system with unnecessary data and false alerts.

2. Avoid overloading security camera analytics

While enabling multiple analytics may seem like a good idea, doing so can create trigger a sequence of unintended consequences including:  

• Reduced system performance: Camera processors and video management systems (VMS) have finite resources. Overloading them can slow response times and limit storage capacity.
• Unnecessary noise: Too many alerts lead to fatigue, making it harder for security teams to focus on real threats.
• Higher costs: More security camera analytics often equates to higher licensing fees and additional hardware resources.

3. Choose the right security camera analytics

To ensure your security camera analytics deliver value, follow these steps:

1. Identify key security or operational challenges: Focus on what you actually need to detect or track and then make decisions from there.
2. Evaluate your camera’s capabilities: Not all cameras support advanced analytics equally. Choose models that align with your goals.
3. Test before deployment: Run a pilot with selected analytics to measure effectiveness and fine-tune thresholds.
4. Monitor and adjust: Regularly review analytics data and make adjustments to ensure you’re getting useful insights.

Smarter Security Camera Analytics, Better Performance

Selecting analytics that directly align with your security or operations goals supports efficiency, reliability and efficacy in your security systems. 

At Pro-Tec Design, we help businesses design intelligent video surveillance solutions tailored to their specific needs—without unnecessary system strain.

Looking to optimize your camera analytics strategy? Contact us today to ensure you’re using the right tools for the job.