Recommendations

[MartyO]

Again, there are many uses for wifi cameras including security. and nothing is 100 percent. not even loosing the lottery.

 

[nayr]

no but 99.99% is a hell of alot better than 99%, and when were working with Wifi I think you'll be damn lucky to get even close to 95%

cameras are typically not active security devices anyhow; there passive and for most people only effective after the fact.. does little to nothing to prevent you from being victimized in the first place.. that still dont make WiFi for Security Cameras acceptable, hardwire or call it a webcam..

Show me a security professional who installs wifi security cameras and I will reveal to you an amateur..

I do penetration testing.. I may be a little paranoid but thats only because I know how weak security really is..

 

[MartyO]

no but 99.99% is a hell of alot better than 99%, and when were working with Wifi I think you'll be damn lucky to get even close to 95%

cameras are typically not active security devices anyhow; there passive and for most people only effective after the fact.. does little to nothing to prevent you from being victimized in the first place.. that still dont make WiFi for Security Cameras acceptable, hardwire or call it a webcam..

Show me a security professional who installs wifi security cameras and I will reveal to you an amateur..

I do penetration testing.. I may be a little paranoid but thats only because I know how weak security really is.

Remember this thread is a Blue Iris thread for security.

 

[MartyO]

no but 99.99% is a hell of alot better than 99%, and when were working with Wifi I think you'll be damn lucky to get even close to 95%

cameras are typically not active security devices anyhow; there passive and for most people only effective after the fact.. does little to nothing to prevent you from being victimized in the first place.. that still dont make WiFi for Security Cameras acceptable, hardwire or call it a webcam..

Show me a security professional who installs wifi security cameras and I will reveal to you an amateur..

I do penetration testing.. I may be a little paranoid but thats only because I know how weak security really is.. there are many privacy implications to installing cameras, would you want that neighbor boy hacking your cameras to perv out on your daughter because you thought wifi was okay.. because if he can he will and you'll likely never know.

so all your 99.99 security system use BI

 

[nayr]

true but there are many privacy implications to installing cameras at your house..
Do you want that neighbor boy hacking your cameras to perv out on your daughter because you thought wifi was okay.. because if he can he will and you'll likely never know.

one of these days one of those crazy women who have a miscarriage and then try to kidnap a newborn is going to realize she can just drive around with a babycam monitor, then we'll see millions of units go right into the trash bin and cries for more security.

Neighbors can be the worst of enemies, Ive had my phone lines tapped by a neighbor before.. discovered it after they moved away and the new neighbors found a phone in the garage that was hooked up to my line.. if they could of got into some cameras on my property it would have been much more traumatic.

I do not use BI, it seems like a good piece of software but I do not allow windows computers on my network.

 

[MartyO]

true but there are many privacy implications to installing cameras at your house..
Do you want that neighbor boy hacking your cameras to perv out on your daughter because you thought wifi was okay.. because if he can he will and you'll likely never know.

one of these days one of those crazy women who have a miscarriage and then try to kidnap a newborn is going to realize she can just drive around with a babycam monitor, then we'll see millions of units go right into the trash bin and cries for more security.

Neighbors can be the worst of enemies, Ive had my phone lines tapped by a neighbor before.. discovered it after they moved away and the new neighbors found a phone in the garage that was hooked up to my line.. if they could of got into some cameras on my property it would have been much more traumatic.

I do not use BI, it seems like a good piece of software but I do not allow windows computers on my network.

Voice security violated is way more serious than video security violated. Security 101, sorry I couldn't resist, but its true

 

[fenderman]

@nayr WTF! a neighbor tapped your line? This intrigues me...did you trace it back to your house? did they bury the cable?

 

[MartyO]

Ok back on subject, its ok to use wifi cameras when using BI and PCs, but nayr and other can help you do this with the best security possible, no joking.

 

[nayr]

they had an unused pair on there trunk and they broke into the box and hooked it up to our line.. the new neighbors realized the line was separate a few weeks after moving in, called another number with caller ID.. then called that number back and was surprised when I picked up the phone.

This was the mid 90's.. back then LEO and Telco didnt give a crap, they just disconnected it and locked the box back up.

I got a call a few months before from some anonymous female kindly letting me know my telephone line was tapped and then hung up, when I *69'd her I got an operator at the local air-force base and they were unable to tell me where the call originated from.. We called the telco and LEO then too and they gave even less of a crap, saying it was someone just trying to harass us.

In the end we suspected it was more a case of a cheating husband than an attack targeted at us... but we dont know, everything we said could have been recorded on a cheap tape device.

 

[fenderman]

Ok back on subject, its ok to use wifi cameras when using BI and PCs, but nayr and other can help you do this with the best security possible, no joking.

I think he is simply pointing to the inherent security issues with wifi. It has nothing to do with the software or the way you record your cameras. Its unlikely that your wifi will be jammed purposely.
For me, bigger issue is that wifi is unreliable...decent wifi cams like hikvision will work most of the time..but its not 100 percent. As nayr pointed out there is Murphy's law...
Some folks are ok with their cams not being 100 percent reliable..that's fine...different strokes, however, wifi is and should always be a last resort..Properly hard-wiring a camera also looks much better since you dont have a nasty power cord running down the wall.

 

[MartyO]

I think he is simply pointing to the inherent security issues with wifi. It has nothing to do with the software or the way you record your cameras. Its unlikely that your wifi will be jammed purposely.
For me, bigger issue is that wifi is unreliable...decent wifi cams like hikvision will work most of the time..but its not 100 percent. As nayr pointed out there is Murphy's law...
Some folks are ok with their cams not being 100 percent reliable..that's fine...different strokes, however, wifi is and should always be a last resort..Properly hard-wiring a camera also looks much better since you dont have a nasty power cord running down the wall.

Yes hardwire is better and I'm sure nayr knows what he is doing with his systems, but some folks want to use BI on a PC with the app which is very nice with wifi, this is a perfecty reasonable thing to do. And nothing is 100%, which includes hardwire. So to minimize down time with wifi, turn down camera settings within reason and use a wifi camera from a wifi router company is a good way(not the only way) go.

 

[MartyO]

Also remember some folks are not savy and will put together a security system following advise from experts here but they will not follow all security proticalls. So they might after many month, not be diligent in their system administration and not realize someone has disconnected LAN camera (that's in a detattached garage) and they've been snooping on network. Sure not likely, but possible cause how many folks are good syst admins.

 

[nayr]

hardwire has a solution to that attack vector @MartyO, with a managed switch you can use Port Authentication with an external auth server.

My Dahua cameras support 802.1x PEAP Auth, when setup correctly the camera authenticates with the switch for network access.. If someone unplugs a camera and tries to utilize the network interface it will be dead or they will be put on a completely different vlan.

I dont think many residential people will apply such hardening, but its really useful for public spaces like schools, parks, parking garages, etc.. where physically securing all the supporting infrastructure may be prohibitive.

I setup my system to record all activity around my property 24/7/365, network connectivity has been 100% since installed a year ago.. my PoE switch has a 736 day uptime today and not one camera has been power cycled since the install was completed.. the only outages I've had were to restart my NAS to replace drives not in the hotswap cage, but it did not take the cameras or network down.

So with the NAS upgrade I am sitting happy right now with better than 99.99% recording uptime, thats less than 52mins of downtime a year.. Remove everything after the decimal and 99% reliable allows for a window of >3.5 days of downtime a year..

In the next year I expect to add another 9, 99.999% is ~5mins of downtime a year.. and I am not doing anything special, just put my cameras on a nice large UPS, installed them properly and left them to do there job.. yeah 100% is unrealistic, but IMHO 99% is crap.. I get better than 99% uptime from comcast with my internet connection and I expect my security system to be alot more reliable than the local cable company.