Privacy masking, an efficient operation for privacy protection in video security

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giugno 16, 2020

As security cameras become more common in both public and private areas, people are getting more concerned about video recording and privacy. Not surprisingly, governments and authorities have issued new guidelines, laws and regulations – like GDPR in Europe - to set stricter requirements and rules for privacy protection.

To help protect people’s privacy and address regulations, privacy redaction solutions are emerging across the security industry. Privacy masking, an efficient and practical approach, has been available in the market for some time to help simplify and implement protection in video security. Right now, many Hikvision cameras, NVRs and DVRs support a privacy masking function, which blurs selected regions, faces, or bodies in recorded video to prevent unwelcome exposure and meet local regulations.

Masking of static regions

To avoid inappropriate or illegal monitoring in limited or sensitive areas, Hikvision’s privacy redaction solution supports a static masking function, which can permanently mask a region or regions from view. This has been a normal privacy protection option in the majority of Hikvision cameras, NVRs and DVRs, and users can easily set up privacy masking in these static regions as needed.

Dynamic privacy masking

In most cases, very few individuals recorded in video footage are related to an investigation; a very small number of subjects are sought for and/or allowed to remain fully visible. Hikvision’s privacy redaction solution offers a dynamic masking function which can automatically mask unrelated faces and bodies in a remote live feed or during playback through HikCentral.

This solution can also provide authorized users such as law enforcement with the original non-masked video to comply with local laws or regulations as required for the purpose of forensic investigation.

Privacy masking for exporting and importing video

Hikvision privacy redaction solution is also proficient when it comes to the process of video exporting through HikCentral. Masking sensitive areas and objects is added during the video-export phase, to provide users flexible functionality. They can select all targets or just a few specific targets for redaction, and they can define a fixed area for redaction as well.

The Hikvision privacy redaction solution also partially supports the redaction of video clips imported from normal NVRs or third-party video management software (VMS) as long as they meet specific technical requirements, further broadening the range of privacy redaction available to users.

To further protect the security of the exported data, Hikvision’s solution also supports encrypting video footage with a password during export from HikCentral.

If you would like to learn more about how Hikvision addresses challenges in privacy protection, please read Hikvision's White Paper on GDPR or visit our website at www.hikvision.com for contact information.