Provide Enhanced User Privacy with Face Blur for Archived Footage

When sharing footage outside of your organization, you may be required—or feel obligated—to blur the faces of individuals who are seen in frame. In some cases, this is to protect the privacy of recorded individuals. In other cases, it may be legally required when sharing footage with third parties—such as in the case of FERPA or GDPR compliance.

Historically, blurring faces in video is a complicated process and requires both additional software and experience with video editing. To make this a seamless experience for Verkada customers, users now have the option within Command to blur all faces when archiving footage.

The Importance of Blurring Faces

With Face Blur, organizations can share footage externally and still protect their privacy and the privacy of individuals in frame. Footage viewed and stored within Verkada is secure and protected by built-in user-based privacy settings, however, this is not the case for footage that is exported from the Command platform.

There are many environments where a person’s identity is sensitive and needs to be kept private. For example, schools with video recordings of identifiable students may decide to remove student identities to comply with state or federal requirements. In addition, healthcare institutions may find it critical to protect the privacy of patients in video recordings.

Depending on the specific requirements of your industry, blurring faces can play a critical role in appropriately protecting the privacy of your staff, customers, and visitors.

How it Works

The option to blur faces is available when archiving footage. In addition to selecting whether or not archived footage can be made available across your organization, users also have the option to choose to ‘Blur All Faces.’

With this option selected, Command will create two archives - one with the video in its original form, and one with the faces blurred. From there, users can share the archives by providing a secure link or by downloading an MP4. Please note that a 10 minute archive with all faces blurred can take over an hour to create. In addition, blurring all faces works best with: 1) Footage with no more than a few people in frame at any given time, and 2) Footage with faces that are not partially obscured at any time.

For more information, please visit the Verkada Knowledge Base.

If you’re interested in experiencing the benefits of Verkada’s solution first-hand, get started with a free 30-day trial today (we cover shipping both ways).