Icetana
The Artisan Of A Safer Society

The root of this famous pop-culture reference can be traced back to British novelist George Orwell’s social science fiction novel “1984.” The novel characterized a dystopian society where people were restricted from independent thought and were victims of constant surveillance by their mysterious leader ‘Big Brother.’

Fast forward to 2021.
Even though the rising use of CCTV and video surveillance has put our daily lives on near-constant surveillance, the very idea of being watched has become normalized. It is no longer associated with Orwell’s horrific, dystopian symbolism of state supremacy. Instead, surveillance cameras are now considered a sign of public safety and security. They can be found in banks, bus stops, department stores, restaurants, homes, and ATMs. These surveillance footages are simultaneously monitored by security personnel and are channeled through the internet in order to deter crimes and rapidly identify offenders.

However, when law enforcement officials manually analyze the video surveillance footage, it often takes them longer to respond to any anomalous activity, reducing their otherwise proactive measures to reactive ones. Fortunately, the recent advancements in AI and ML algorithms are offering security personnel a novel way to analyze their surveillance footage in real-time. And the company that is pushing the envelope for such technology-driven video analysis is Australia-based icetana.

icetana is a global SaaS software company providing video analytics solutions designed to automatically identify anomalous actions in real-time for large-scale surveillance networks used in schooland college campuses, correctional facilities, financial institutions, and other government and public properties. Leveraging the power of AI and ML, icetana’s anomaly detection solution learns and filters out routine motion, showing only unusual behavior, thereby allowing operators to focus on events that matter and respond in real-time to both precursor activities and incidents. Moreover, the software integrates with a company’s existing video management systems and IP cameras, making it versatile for a lot of use cases and applications.

At present, more than 40 clients across four continents use icetana’s video analytics solution to harness the rich data streams from their existing security networks and turn that data into improved situational awareness and deeper operational insights.

Improving the Quality of Video Surveillance Response

Traditional, rules-based analytics require heavy pre-configuration and are exceptionally labor-intensive. While they can be good at certain kinds of analysis, Video Content Analytics (VCAs) are only able to detect expected and known types of events. This is where icetana’s scalable video anomaly detection solution stirs a difference; by requiring no rules input or pre-configuration, icetana’s video monitoring software goes far beyond traditional VCAs and simply highlights any abnormal behavior. It focuses the attention of security personnel on the most important or unusual events occurring in their facilities at any given time, whether they are monitoring dozens or thousands of cameras. The company allows users to see things differently by highlighting in real-time anything abnormal across the camera scene. icetana also highlights events beyond security, such as health, safety, and operational compliance. The video anomaly detection software uses AI to learn “normal” movement patterns, and then abnormal movement is highlighted in real-time, allowing operators to focus on events that matter and respond to both precursor activities and incidents. icetana complements existing video management systems to remove noise and increase efficiency for operators and has a broad range of use cases across a growing number of industry verticals. Since the elements of a video can be detected not by a person or an object but by a set of pixels, it is possible to identify all situations such as fire, intrusion, reverse run, fall, and group. Security personnel can thus identify potential threats to security, health and safety violations, human resources issues, business operations challenges, or opportunities and can provide business insights with one powerful tool.

What’s more? icetana’s video analysis solutions are resistant to environmental changes during operation; it learns based on the video of the latest fixed period (two weeks, for instance) and updates the information in the normal state so that it can respond to changes in the environment of the season and background video. Therefore, it is not necessary to adjust the angle of view of the camera each time the object is changed or to relearn according to changes in the environment. The video analysis solution also includes a feature called LiveWall™, which shows only events that need further investigation (one percent of total video), reducing operator fatigue and missed events.

The result? Security personnel and facilities using icetana’s solution can achieve a 99 percent reduction in video overload. This is accomplished while still achieving 100 percent real-time proactive monitoring, which provided their staff with the visibility of identifying precursors to events. As a result, security persons could deploy their resources efficiently and reduce their operational costs significantly. They could also focus more on access control and restricted areas, providing more purposeful employment and providing increased safety for their patrons.


These outstanding capabilities of icetana’s video analytics solutions have already made the company a popular name across many continents. icetana has recently announced its first purchase orders for the U.S. correctional facilities after two new five-year client orders were confirmed with hardware systems vendor Rasilient Systems, Inc. “This is a significant opportunity for icetana to demonstrate its full capabilities of our motion intelligence platform to a new geographic market and potentially expand into a larger subset of the correctional facilities,” says Matthew Macfarlane, managing director and CEO of icetana.

Creating a Safer Tomorrow

Moving ahead with an undeterred momentum, icetana is at present working on the next generation of its video analytics solution in a partnership with semiconductor solution provider Panasonic and cyber security, AI/IoT solution provider Macnica, Inc. This partnership is expected to strengthen icetana’s offering even more by enabling them to offer an integrated surveillance solution suite comprising security cameras, video management systems, and anomaly detection tools. “We are very pleased that Panasonic, the industry leader, and Macnica, the technology trading company, are working on this system integration. We believe this is an extremely important step for us to grow through our strong partners in Japan. We are also confident that the use of cameras will complement security activities and improve operational efficiency in all industries,” concludes Macfarlane.