Distributed Video Surveillance Made Simple and Secure
LiviView Technologies, LVT, provides on demand, rapidly deployed surveillance to some of the largest companies in the world. Energy, law enforcement, DOTs, retail and construction rely on LVT’s leading security technology and surveillance solutions. LVT’s success resulted in a large, distributed network which became very expensive and difficult to manage using legacy networking. LVT partnered with NetFoundry to transform the networking from a rapidly growing cost center to a competitive advantage, including strengthening data security for LVT, LVT customers and the LVT ecosystem.
We are committed to making the world a safer place, and we are just as committed to protecting our clients’ data and information. Partnering with NetFoundry isn’t just a way to accomplish this, but the best way.
Case Study Highlights
Transformative Security & Cost Efficiency
LVT partnered with NetFoundry to enhance data security through zero trust network overlays while significantly reducing cellular and cloud egress costs, turning networking into a competitive advantage.
Streamlined Operations & Innovation
The shift to a software-only architecture improved operational efficiency by centralizing controls and telemetry, enabling LVT to drive innovation in analytics, AI, and seamless partner integrations.
LVT's Network Management Obstacles
LVT struggled with security risks from private mobile APNs and VPNs, high egress costs from data backhauling, and operational complexity due to decentralized controls. Those challenges hindered automation and innovation, limiting effective customer data protection.
Obstacle
LVT had significant challenges with multiplying locations and networks for their surveillance cameras that are distributed globally, leveraging multiple cellular carriers, local networks (for example, a retailer’s local network) and increasingly private 5G.Â
The data is distributed across cameras, LVT sites, customers and partners. With the rise of edge compute and edge AI, the workloads are becoming even more distributed.
Finally, there is a management network – including monitoring, upgrades, remote management, APIs, telemetry and operations. As LVT is highly automated, this is a very dynamic network.
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Challenges with large, distributed, dynamic networks
LVT’s growth and commitment to protecting their customers’ data presented several challenges:
Security vulnerabilities
The private mobile APN and local networks do not provide the zero-trust posture which LVT demanded for its customers. The VPNs from the private APN providers to the LVT sites were even worse.
Significant cellular and cloud egress costs
All data had to be backhauled to LVT sites. LVT distributed data from there, resulting in high cloud egress costs. Meanwhile, cellular costs were rising as choices like Wi-Fi were often not secure or reliable enough.
Velocity and operational obstacles
The lack of centralized telemetry, controls, identities and policies compromised many LVT automation initiatives. Dependencies on firewalls and ACLs, VPNs, hardware and IP addresses added operational overhead and complexity. Adding to the complexity was the need for bespoke solutions for different needs, e.g. needing to manage different solutions for inbound (e.g. secure remote access) and outbound data needs, as well as differences between different edges and clouds.
Lack of innovation
LVT innovation was one reason behind their success. Newer initiatives to leverage edge compute, integrate with partners, and use local networks including private 5G and Wi-Fi were made infeasible by dependencies on legacy networking, including the need to backhaul all data. Even using multiple clouds was problematic due to the VPN backhaul from the mobile carrier APNs.
Business Benefits of the NetFoundry-based Solution
Innovation
By replacing legacy networking and security with a pure software, network independent solution, LVT continues to shape the future of surveillance.
Cost savings
Eliminating the upfront costs and OpEx of cloud egress, private APNs, VPNs and hardware dependent solutions enabled LVT to invest more in building world class products.
Quality improvement
Despite multiple last mile bandwidth providers, LVT gained centralized telemetry, controls, identities and policies. This ultimately enabled high quality services and better customer visibility.
Strong security
LVT has always been proactive in protecting customer data, so LVT seized the opportunity to upgrade to a zero implicit trust architecture which exceeded guidelines from NIST and CISA, and meant LVT was continuing to be the leader.
Solution & Outcome
Optimizing large, distributed, dynamic networks
LVT partnered with NetFoundry to solve each of the challenges described on the previous page. It also enabled LVT to move to a software-only, network-independent architecture to get the future-proofed extensibility and flexibility LVT wanted to ensure they could continue to shape the future of surveillance:
Security
NetFoundry’ software-only, zero trust network overlays meant underlay networks no longer mattered. Private APNs and VPNs could be eliminated. Wi-Fi, public APN and private 5G could be used. LVT, customer and partner networks could receive LVT data without any network exposure – rather than host perimeter security devices or poke holes in their firewalls, they open outbound-only sessions to the private LVT network overlay. Their firewall rules are literally deny-all inbound!
Cost savings
Cellular and cloud egress costs were massively reduced. Some data can go directly from cameras and edge sites to destinations, without first backhauling to LVT sites, and then incurring cloud egress costs. The most cost-efficient local bandwidth could be used for each site. Unreliable (but cheap or free) networks could be used for operations like software upgrades because the NetFoundry software enables different networks to be used for different purposes.
Operations excellence
Gaining centralized, network- independent telemetry, controls, identities and policies fueled LVT’s quality control and automation initiatives. Velocity skyrocketed due to the elimination of dependencies on firewalls, ACLs, VPNs, hardware and IP addresses. The NetFoundry solution secured both inbound and outbound, and abstracted away differences in edges, networks, clouds and customer environments such that LVT simply manages centralized identities and policies.
Accelerated innovation
LVT unblocked initiatives in quality, analytics, AI and functionality. LVT was now able to leverage any network, edge compute and cloud. LVT was able to integrate with partners and APIs without any network engineering or security risks. The replacement of hardware, infrastructure and IP-address dependent solutions with NetFoundry’s 100% software solution meant that the entire LVT stack became one software system, with corresponding extensibility and flexibility.
A New Era in Surveillance Technology
About NetFoundry
Networking was once a barrier to app innovation and automation with dependencies on after-the-fact security and performance engineering. NetFoundry is shifting the paradigm in cybersecurity by embedding zero trust networking and security as code. Our NetFoundry Cloud solution embeds zero trust as software into apps, APIs, IoT devices, and other valuable assets rendering critical infrastructure invisible to the internet – and unreachable by potential attackers. It is the world’s first programmable, cloud native, zero trust network with near unlimited scale concurrency, and performance. NetFoundry Cloud represents a new art of the impossible by enabling developers, network engineers, DevOps, and cloud teams to programmatically control private, zero trust, high performance networking. NetFoundry Cloud is built on NetFoundry’s Ziti platform which is part of the OpenZiti project, the world’s most used and widely integrated open source networking platform.
