Build Physical Security Superpowers with Smart Bullet Cameras and Multi-Imagers
How is your current physical security deployment doing?
We consistently hear about cybersecurity threats looming in our increasingly digital spaces. Yet the breaches happening in our physical spaces—breaches that directly affect our people, places, and things—are just as prominent. In fact, 23% of chief security officers rate theft of company physical property as one of the top four external threats, up there with phishing, social engineering, and the number one threat, fraud.
In today’s fast-paced world, ensuring the security of your people, places, and things requires a proactive approach to continually improve threat detection and critical incident management. Depending on your spaces, this can involve a variety of smart camera types, from fisheye lens and multi-imagers to fixed dome and bullet-lens cameras. Each plays a specific role in effectively monitoring indoor areas, entrances, exits, or parking lots and other open, outdoor spaces.
Faster than a siloed bullet camera
Many businesses already use physical security cameras, but poor integration can make it challenging to deploy and manage newer devices. Traditional security setups typically combine network video recorders (NVRs) and video management systems (VMSs). NVRs are specialized devices that store digital footage on a hard drive, while VMS software handles live and recorded video feeds. These systems often come from different manufacturers, requiring manual setup and configuration. Additionally, isolated on-premises solutions can slow down incident response times.
Imagine a hit-and-run occurs in a parking lot you oversee. The only detail you have is that one of the involved cars was red. A bullet camera—ideal for monitoring large outdoor areas—should have captured the incident.
However, retrieving that footage with traditional on-premises systems can be time-consuming. Slow bandwidth may delay video loading, and the resolution might be too poor to identify key details. On-premises setups also introduce multiple failure points, increasing the risk of system issues. Troubleshooting these problems only extends your response time further.
Let’s compare this scenario to one with a cloud-managed physical security solution. Adding a new bullet camera to your existing deployment would be very easy. Typically, all that’s needed to install is power and internet. With Meraki, installation is done right on the camera itself, saving bandwidth. All cameras are connected to your Meraki dashboard for simplified management.
Mounted overlooking your parking lot, a bullet camera like our MV53X can monitor areas as far as 100 feet away (approximately the length of a basketball court) with up to 4K resolution. When that hit-and-run occurs in your parking lot, you can then use our AI-powered tool, attribute search, to filter through all the recorded video to only show clips of red cars. This process is extremely easy and saves a lot of time, allowing you to focus on what comes after: providing the incident footage to the appropriate teams.
Banish blind spots with a single deployment
What about a different scenario? Let’s say you have been tasked with deploying a physical security solution for a retail aisle with multiple entry points. You could opt for several varifocal lens cameras to monitor these entrances and exits. However, deploying multiple cameras roughly side by side requires four separate drilled holes and four sets of arm brackets or mounting plates—in total, four distinct and complete camera installations. Additionally, the cabling required for multiple deployments can become excessive.
Once installed, you’d then have to manually set the field of view (FOV) of each camera, one by one, to capture what you are looking for and account for blind spots across your deployment. Why not just bundle that deployment process with one camera? A valuable type of form factor, where both deployment and management of the camera solution become far easier and more effective in a cloud-managed platform, is a multi-imager. Built with four individual cameras within a single camera body, it is ideal for monitoring and safeguarding areas with multiple streams of people and vehicles coming towards the camera’s FOV.
The Meraki MV84X multi-imager offers not only the capabilities you need but also the differentiating performance characteristics that make it easier to capture and locate essential footage in the case of an incident. It attaches to your network and deploys as easily as the bullet camera described above, delivering 4 TB of storage and four 5 MP sensors to monitor your space—fully eliminating blind spots. Its 1080p/24fps resolution and 120-day retention limits allow you to document a trove of visual details. And with intelligent tools such as AI-powered motion search and motion recap, the MV84X accelerates your ability to pinpoint the details that matter in an investigation.
Simplification: The real hero of your physical security story
Adding bullet cameras, multi-imagers, or other security cameras to your existing setup should be effortless—and with Meraki, it’s even easier.
The Meraki dashboard streamlines camera management, allowing you to configure settings, monitor feeds, adjust user permissions, and detect offline devices in just a few clicks. With instant alerts and actionable analytics at your fingertips, you can respond faster and make smarter security decisions. This intuitive approach saves time while boosting the effectiveness of your physical security.
When it comes to integration, we ensure a smooth transition, so you can adopt the latest protective technology without disrupting daily operations. That’s a game-changer for any organization—and why we’re thrilled to expand our portfolio with the MV53X bullet camera (available now) and the MV84X multi-imager (launching spring 2025).