How Casinos Are Gambling With Their Video Surveillance Storage
Julie Fagan
Here’s some free advice: Don’t try to rob a casino.
It’s no secret that casinos are some of the most watched places on the planet. In a casino, hundreds of cameras are installed throughout every square inch of the building, giving security personnel high-definition, 24/7 visibility into what every patron and every employee is doing at any given time. They know which games you’re playing and for how long. They can track how much money you’re winning (or, more likely, losing), and what you do after you leave the table. They can even use advanced AI and analytics to predict your next move so that they can accurately staff bars and tables based on real-time activity.
They’re looking for card counters, whose disguises (glasses, mustaches, wigs, and hats) are no match for their facial recognition technology. (Hot tip: If you’re counting cards and the casino hasn’t kicked you out yet, it’s not because you’re really good. It’s because you’re really bad and they’ve decided to let you stay to lose more money.)
They’re looking for people with gambling addictions who have placed themselves on exclusion lists and can actually sue the casino if they’re allowed to play. And they’re looking for criminals who aren’t allowed in casinos by law.
Admittedly, much of the video captured by casinos is used after the fact for evidence. So even if you do succeed in pulling off an Ocean’s 11 heist, it probably won’t be long until the video is used to track you down.
Cameras are essential to the 24/7 operation of a casino. If even one camera goes down over a game table, the casino must shut down that table. If several cameras go down, they must close the entire floor, potentially losing thousands of dollars in revenue, to say nothing of the damage to their reputation. In the event of a shutdown, a casino can even be penalized by regulatory agencies, with fines reaching into the millions.
The Casino Storage Paradox
Yet, even with millions of dollars at stake, many casinos are still running outdated and unreliable video surveillance storage. They pump money into cameras and analytics software but prop them up with cheap, commodity storage. Traditional video deployments with low-cost, white-box digital video recorders (DVRs) are not only prone to failure, they’re also expensive to manage and extremely difficult to scale.If you put cheap tires on a high-performance race car, you’re going to have a bad time.
Casinos that aren’t thinking about the storage that their video surveillance infrastructure is running on are putting their reputations and their businesses at risk. With NetApp® E-Series systems, casinos don’t have to gamble with their video surveillance infrastructure. The NetApp E-Series video surveillance storage solution is designed for the highest levels of reliability, speed, and scalability. Easy manageability and low total cost of ownership make it a perfect choice for cost-conscious casinos.
Download the solution brief to learn more about NetApp’s E-Series video surveillance solution for gaming.
Julie Fagan
Julie Fagan has a long career in high-tech solutions marketing. She loves working at NetApp where she gets to focus on bringing the best video surveillance and high performance computing storage solutions to the world along with her awesome co-workers.
