Avigilon Adds Appearance Alerts to Commercial VMS

Avigilon Corp., a Motorola Solutions company, announces the latest version of its video management software (VMS) now incorporates facial recognition technology.

The new “appearance alerts” capability of Avigilon Control Center (ACC) 7.4 will help commercial organizations, such as educational institutions and hospitals, accelerate response times by identifying people of interest in enterprise settings, according to the announcement.

For example, the technology can alert the security team at a local high school when a banned or flagged individual has entered the campus.

People of interest are identified based on a secure, controlled watch list created and maintained by authorized users at the commercial organization.

If a potential match is found, the user is alerted within the ACC software, and security personnel can then determine whether further investigation or action is necessary.

“Our latest ACC software delivers substantial benefits to our commercial customers by offering facial recognition technology in a secure and controlled manner,” states John Kedzierski, senior vice president, video security solutions, Motorola Solutions. “The appearance alerts capability enables our customers to move from a reactive approach — staring at a wall of video feeds where critical information can be easily missed — to a proactive approach that brings important information directly to authorized users so they can make better-informed decisions.”

ACC’s new facial recognition capabilities reflect Motorola Solutions’ commitment to the responsible use of artificial intelligence as well as individual privacy rights, the announcement states. The company states that data stewardship is integral to these new capabilities, including building compliance controls into its products to support this.

For example, user authentication is required for these capabilities, audit logs of user actions are generated, data retention periods for the watch list can be specified within the application, and records can be expunged or deleted on demand as well as verified through auditing and reporting.

Data is locally hosted, owned and controlled by the business or school. The data used to train machine learning algorithms is also thoroughly evaluated, ensuring sufficient quantity, quality and diversity to ensure high accuracy and consistent performance, according to the company.