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Milestone launches XProtect Central 3.6

Large security installations can minimise risks and optimise operations using clickable graphical overviews and customisable alarms with visual verification on the status of all connections and hardware.

Milestone Systems has announced XProtect Central version 3.6. Large security installations can minimise risks and optimise operations using clickable graphical overviews and customisable alarms with visual verification on the status of all connections and hardware. XProtect Central is aimed at implementations with multiple sites or buildings.

Installations with a variety of servers, cameras and hardware must run properly to ensure top security: if a device fails to record or display video, the outcome can be devastating. Milestone XProtect Central is a powerful tool for managing the demands of such critical operations to help ensure maximum up-time, total overview, and fast response. It continuously monitors the operational status and event-triggered alarms of Milestone XProtect Corporate or XProtect Enterprise servers, video surveillance cameras, and integrated devices like access control units. Security operators get instant graphical overviews of alarms and technical problem alerts with immediate visual verification to resolve issues. Most importantly, they are able to create an audit trail of the events.

Multilevel maps make it easy to navigate to and identify an incident location and the system elements involved: alarms are shown at the highest level map, like a city site, and operators can quickly click down to sub-level maps of buildings, rooms, gates, etc. Output signals, as well as global and user defined events can be placed on a map and easily activated via a context menu.

Alarm management and verification

* Spread the workload and provide backup capacity by assigning alarm management to multiple simultaneous operators with individual rights.

* An alarm list displays a filtered overview of all problems for clicking directly to an incident. A continuous beep feature has been added, where the client application can attract attention if it has been minimised. When continuous beep has been chosen in the system setup, the application will beep every 5 seconds while new priority-1 alarms remain unhandled.

* Users can define alarm priorities, pre-define time profiles, acknowledge or reassign alarms. Enable and disable alarms with controlled user commands or by hardware input signals. For example, this can be used to enable a motion detected alarm when the last person leaves a building.

* The broad range of events available for triggering alarms allows flexible customisation to fit the needs of each organisation.

* Alarms with related cameras will now run through all of them to grab the relevant images. This is useful for alarms triggered by an input signal with a preview image from a camera, and can also be used for two cameras watching each other: if one fails, the other provides a preview image of what happened with the first one.

Integration with third-party systems

XProtect Central has plug-in support for third-party systems like access control or other devices. Operators can both monitor and control these from the XProtect Central interface (close or open gates, doors, turn off smoke detectors, etc), in addition to monitoring and verifying their status and alarms.

XProtect Central empowers operators to be in control

Visual and audio alerts also improve busy environments like alarm and dispatch centrals, where the instant access to servers and camera devices translates to quick response for all locations. Using XProtect Central, operators can concentrate their time on actual events and not just stare ineffectively at a monitor wall with many cameras.

XProtect Central provides connectivity to XProtect Corporate and XProtect Enterprise servers, with centralised event and alarm logging. The XProtect Central Client allows configuration of servers and user access, location maps and alarms, the interface for monitoring the system’s operational status, the tools for managing alarms, pre-defining event triggers, and viewing live or recorded video for visual verifications, including previews. A server start-up parameter has been added for defining where configuration, log files, preview images and other system files are placed. This can be used to have a ‘hot-standby’ of the XProtect Central server. Running on standard computer equipment with Windows XP, 2003 or Vista, XProtect Central supports Active Directory for ease of administration and user authentications.

Getting alerts about any device or connection with a problem prompts faster, more appropriate response, keeping the security up and running at all times. It is more than just alarm and operations management; it is trouble-shooting that minimises risk significantly.

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