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Ask Slashdot: Security Monitoring Company That Accepts VPN Video Feeds?

Posted by timothy on from the end-to-end-please dept.

mache writes: My cousin is finishing up a major remodel of his home in Houston and has installed video cameras for added security. At my suggestion, he wired up all the cameras to be on a separate VLAN that only uses wired Ethernet and has no WiFi access. Since the Houston police will only respond to security alarms if the monitoring company is viewing the crime in progress, he must arrange for the video feed to available to a security monitoring company. I told him that the feed should use VPN or some other encrypted tunneling technique as it travels the Internet to the monitoring company and we proceeded to try and find a company that supported those protocols. No one I have talked to understands the importance of securing a video feed and everyone so far blithely suggests that we just open a port on his home router. Its frustrating to see such willful ignorance about Internet security. Does anyone know of a security monitoring company that we can work with that has a clue?

3 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. IP matching by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is a degree of understanding for why a security company might not want to use your VPN solution; if they have to monitor a lot of customers' cameras then they'd have to have a lot of different VPN clients running that might cause problems when the networks overlap private IP addresses.

    Configure your firewall to allow their IP address range to port-translate to the NVR's IP and port(s). ACL-off your security VLAN from your user VLAN(s), and vice-versa, and allow only the correct ports through from your user network(s) to the NVR.

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    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:IP matching by silas_moeckel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not at all, VPN does not mean NAT traversal, IPSec is perfectly capable of security on public IP to another hell that was a design goal.

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      No sir I dont like it.
  2. Unsecure on alarm by holophrastic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I certainly understand the need to secure the video, fully encrypted, of my home. But I'd be willing to have it unencrypted, and fully open in fact, during a break-in. It's a big call for help for anyone looking, and it really ought not be that often. And anyone whe'd stage a robbery to see the footage as recon for next time, well, that sounds foolish.

    So, while not perfect, why not switch to unencrypted during alarm scenarios?