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Improved security for Diamond Trust Bank in Tanzania

Diamond Trust Bank (DTB Tanzania) is a large financial services provider in Tanzania and Tanzania's fourth most profitable bank. The bank has a network of 28 branches, half of which are in the city of Dar es Salaam and the remaining 14 are located across the country in the major commercial centres.

DTB Bank continually integrates the latest technologies to ensure accelerated growth. With many branches spread nationwide, a centralised security management system with real–time views had become a challenge.

Regulatory authorities in the country require financial institutions to store 180 days of security video. While DTB Bank performed standard recording at the branch-level, it was of paramount importance to enhance that capacity and look at possible options of centralised storage for all branches.

Upgrading from analogue

DTB had an existing standard analogue CCTV setup from Hikvision, but it was time to upgrade with better technology. Hikvision proposed entirely refurbishing DTB’s control room, which included a data storage facility at the DTB Bank headquarters, using Hikvision’s central management software iVMS-5200 Pro and the DS-A82024D central video recorder (CVR). Supporting all remote sites’ local storage, CVR was used to receive data streams directly from network cameras. With CVR there is no need for an intermediate storage server, which increases storage efficiency and system stability, whilst reducing hardware cost.

One of the critical issues in this installation was the bandwidth. The network between HQ and the bank’s branches has a fairly limited capacity, so the lower the cameras' bandwidth, the better. DTB installed over 1000 Hikvision EasyIP 3.0 cameras, which feature both lighter bandwidth load and better codec technology with H.265+ solutions to cover all branches. Consequently, the bandwidth among branches and the control centre has greatly decreased.

Project highlights

• High quality video: All DTB’s branches were updated to IP solutions. Image quality and video resolution is vastly improved.

• Centralised operation and maintenance: The new intelligent software platform makes central coordination flexible and efficient.

• Low bandwidth: With Hikvision’s video compression – H.265+ – the bandwidth used between HQ and all branches has decreased measurably. Storage time for video footage recorded at each branch has greatly improved with lowered overall storage requirements.

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