The enterprise wearable camera market continues to see growth through law enforcement, field services, and first responder applications due to their ability to collect evidence and record interactions. ABI Research forecasts enterprise wearable camera shipments will reach nearly 24 million in 2022. Yet as growth fuels, so do privacy and data protection concerns.
Data collected from wearable cameras can often include recordings of innocent bystanders, potential witnesses, and even victims. If not protected, this data in the wrong hands can be used to threaten those caught on camera, one of the main public concerns. ABI Research finds that it is important that strong security protocols be put in place by enterprise wearable camera vendors and adhered to by device users to ensure that all data is kept secure and risk of loss is minimized.
Enterprise wearable camera vendors, such as Axon, Reveal and Zepcam offer supporting platforms that will aid enterprises in securing the data that is collected from wearable cameras. These platforms feature strong authentication, password, and data encryption mechanisms, which ensure that only authorized personnel have access to the data. The platforms also log who accesses the data and when.
Some platforms, like those by Edesix and VIEVU, can also help to redact certain details, such as automatically blurring out the faces and possessions of innocent bystanders. Often the devices feature built-in storage, rather than storing the recordings on SD cards, which ensure that the data cannot be forcibly removed or deleted before being uploaded to the platforms.
Wearable cameras are wearable or portable devices that facilitate the recording of an activity by a participant from a first-person, or near first-person, perspective—as opposed to original cameras, which are not wearable, and capture an activity from a secondary point-of-view. While possibly the most well-known consumer wearable camera is GoPro, there are an increasing number of other consumer devices, as well as enterprise devices. These cameras are designed to be used by law enforcement agencies, first responders, field services workers, and more, to help capture evidence or to protect the safety of the wearer.
The smartphone market has transformed the way cameras are used, allowing them to become portable and convenient, with an easy-to-share functionality. Wearable cameras are an extension of this, as they enable a hands-free method of recording planned and spontaneous events. Within the enterprise market, this ensures that any interactions or events are recorded, which can later be used as evidence, or provide an extra layer of protection.
The wearable camera market is starting to see a large amount of growth as consumers and enterprises alike realize the benefits of capturing almost any interaction. While the consumer market will remain the larger of the two over the next five years, the enterprise market will see a much higher rate of growth, with a CAGR of 19.3 percent compared to 9.2 percent for the consumer market. This is due to the number of benefits associated with using these devices for the collection of evidence and the protection of safety.
“Despite clear advantages to the usage of this technology, enterprises fear attacks from cybercriminals and data theft,” says Stephanie Lawrence, Research Analyst at ABI Research. “With massive data leaks often reaching mainstream news, public concern is rising over the security of wearable camera recordings, including who has access to such footage and for how long.”
