Member Article

Is this Newcastle surveillance-tech startup about to revolutionise how UK retailers fight crime?

With UK organisations spending an estimated total of £800m a year to defend themselves against cases of fraudulent slips, trips and falls, a newly-established Newcastle tech firm believes it has created a solution to combating what’s becoming an ever-increasing problem for retailers.

Ocucon, which is marketing itself as the world’s first Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) system, has been set up to provide unlimited storage for unlimited cameras within the cloud.

Set to be launched this week with Google Cloud at Retail Risk, the leading loss prevention and risk management conference, the new technology will remove physical limitations on the amount of surveillance footage an organisation can save.

Delivering a cloud-based storage and retrieval platform, Ocucon combines intelligent data analytics with the facility to store, analyse and retrieve unlimited amounts of video surveillance footage from within the Ocucon portal.

Offering protection against theft, vandalism or fraudulent insurance claims, the new service is reportedly generating significant interest among large retail chains and is expected to be of interest to any organisation capturing large amounts of CCTV data, such as transport hubs or local authorities.

Gary Trotter, Co-Founder, explained: “Typically, businesses are restricted to saving 30 days of surveillance footage purely because of the sheer scale and size of the data.

“However, the threat of litigation and fraudulent claims – many of which are received after 30 days has passed - has resulted in increasing numbers of businesses needing to store their security footage for longer.

“Ocucon is the first cloud-based software system that processes and transmits unlimited amounts of CCTV footage into the cloud.”

Gary added: “Providing organisations with the flexibility to store uncapped amounts of data for as long as required will revolutionise the way in which businesses defend against wrongful allegations and will allow for greater post-recording video analytics that will ultimately generate significant security and business insights.”