CASE STUDY: State Bank of India : Banking On Round-The-Clock Surveillance

Having experienced first-hand the benefits of deploying surveillance storage
solutions for bank video surveillance, the State Bank of India (SBI) is full of
praise for the surveillance-optimized capabilities. Earlier the bank was using
conventional PC-based hard drives in its surveillance digital video recorder (SDVR)
solutions, which demanded round-the-clock operation and high availability as
well as great reliability.

Understandably, the bank was dissatisfied with the generic hard drives'
lackluster perfor­mance, which did not match up to their surveillance
require­ments. This is why the institution turned to Seagate surveillance
storage solutions to better meet its needs. Recently the SBI switched to the
SV35 Series storage solutions and has not looked back since.

Client profile

Established in July 1, 1955, the SBI is India's biggest banking and
financial institution. With approximately 10,000 branches across India and
globally, it offers advanced financial services, such as insurance policies,
mutual funds, personal and housing loans, as well as infrastructure bonds, among
others.

Clients and the Indian public alike recognize the bank as a reputable banking
institution that delivers up to the mark financial service. It has also been
actively involved in service upgrades through the use of innovative technology
to improve quality levels throughout its operations, earning it the Technology
Award 2005 by British financial journal, The Banker.

As part of this initiative, the SBI embarked on a nationwide surveillance
deployment throughout its branches, seeking to monitor service quality and key
banking operations through SDVR systems in an effort to satisfy its drive for
higher service levels.

SDVR deployment

Deploying up to 18 SDVRs per branch, the SBI made use of a localized
surveillance network at each branch to carry out its surveillance operations.
From there, multiple cameras with real-time viewing capabilities were connected
to a PC-based hard drive, establishing a secure, closed-loop surveillance
solution that the bank uses to monitor staff service levels and identify
security threats.

However, while the deploy­ment was sound, security lapses often came in the
form of hard drive issues. Maj MH Riza, Assistant GM-Security Depart­ment, SBI
pointed out that this stemmed from the mismatch of PC-based hard drives to SDVR
applications.

“When we first deployed our SDVR systems, we used PC-based hard disk drives
as there was no surveillance specific storage solution then. This often cascaded
into operational issues for us,” said Riza.

Generic PC-based hard disk drives are simply not engineered for the demands
of SDVR applications. “Besides the occasional disk errors, we also encounter
problems such as limited capacity and difficulties in performing hard disk drive
replacements, which are complex and can only be accomplished by computer
professionals,” he added.

However, the lack of a surveillance-optimized storage solution in the market
meant that the SBI had to put up with these inconveniences as part and parcel of
having an incomplete SDVR system.

SV35 Series drives

The introduction of the SV35 Series drives meant an about-turn in the bank's
surveillance fortunes. After several consul­tations and a product presen­tation
by Seagate professionals, the bank executives were won over by the reliability,
high capacity and surveillance optimized features of the SV35 Series drives.

“What we were most impressed with was how Seagate had engineered the SV35
Series drives to meet the demands of SDVR systems. This meant improved video
availability, higher hard drive reliability and best of all, high data capacity
we need to meet the government's stringent 90-day storage requirement while
avoiding hard disk drives changes on a regular basis,” said Riza.

The SBI had calculated that with its current usage, it would fill up 500GB of
hard disk space every 90 days. With the high-capacity SV35 Series drives, not
only would the bank be able to install a lesser number of hard disk drives per
branch, but installations and replacements would also become simpler than with
conventional PC-based hard disk drives. According to Riza, the State Bank of
India did not take long to decide on the Seagate surveillance storage offering.

“Technically, the SV35 Series drives were a natural choice for us. Not only
do we not need to change any of our SDVR workflow to deploy the drives, the
actual usage is also seamless and less complicated. All we have to do is just
plug the storage solution in and everything just works,” he said.

Conclusion

Post deployment, the results of leveraging the SV35 Series drives for the
SBI's SDVR systems spoke volumes. Today, not only does the bank find its SDVR
systems more robust than before, it can also easily retrieve its entire recorded
data without incurring unnecessary downtime.

By deploying the SV35 Series storage solutions, the State Bank of India has
overcome the limitations of non surveillance-optimized hard disk drives,
boosting the reliability and capacity of its SDVR systems while preserving the
data integrity of its surveillance footage.

In the process, the bank has set a precedent in India, marking a significant
paradigm shift towards surveillance-optimized hard disk drives for the financial
industry as a whole.

RUTH SAMSON

ruths@cybermedia.co.in