Security Operations Center – Video Wall Upgrades

By Neal Bellamy, IT Director at Kenton Brothers

When you have a security operations center, a common component is a video wall. A video wall enables your officers to maintain situational awareness by displaying information from multiple systems simultaneously. Often, the video wall will evolve over time to become more and more helpful. Recently, we helped a customer take their video wall through their next evolution.

Video walls can be as simple as a PC with two screens, or can be monstrous walls with LCD tiles connected to make one seamless huge display with video wall drivers connected to dozens of PCs. Usually, there is a balance between flexibility and cost.

The History

Our customer’s current video wall setup was left over from their original analog video camera installation from the 90s. It started as a large security console for two officers. It was about 12 feet wide and 5 feet tall, and sat in the middle of the room. Originally, it had old-school CRT TVs mounted in the console, but over the years, the CRTs were replaced with LCD TVs. While the video wall served its purpose, there were several areas that were not ideal.

The screens faced the visitor window, which made it easy for visitors to see what was going on at the facility, but also made it hard for an officer to know when a visitor came in. There were multiple PCs running the various systems, each with its own keyboard and mouse. Finally, the replacement TVs were mounted wherever they fit, which left the TVs mounted at different depths, making the video wall less than seamless.

The facility wanted to go through a refresh of the entire room, and asked us to help with the video wall. Of course, we jumped at the chance. The shape and size of the room made the design a little challenging, but ultimately, we were able to help their video evolve to the next level.

The Update

The new space faced the visitor window, which also turned the displays away from the visitors. Next, we chose the largest commercial displays that would fit into the space. Then we designed the rest of the displays around those. They had several displays that could be reused, which helped reduce the cost of the overall project.

We chose mounts that allowed for the displays to be tightly tiled, which created a more seamless experience. Finally, we installed a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) device that allowed for a single keyboard and mouse to drive all five PCs in the background. This helps the officers switch between systems without having to switch keyboards or mice.

Do you need help refreshing or updating your security operations center? Give us a call. We will help you get there.