Stolen NVR

[keeperofthecode]

How do you guys protect yourself from stolen NVRs? Recently dealing with a break in where they found the hidden Dahua NVR and took it as well. In this instance we believe it was an inside job as it seems they new exactly where NVR was hidden. Can Dahua backup to an external drive placed in a safe or something?

 

[mat200]

How do you guys protect yourself from stolen NVRs? Recently dealing with a break in where they found the hidden Dahua NVR and took it as well. In this instance we believe it was an inside job as it seems they new exactly where NVR was hidden. Can Dahua backup to an external drive placed in a safe or something?

Hi @keeperofthecode

possible to setup a hybrid system .. and record to a NVR and a Blue Iris box .. or the like ..

and certainly sounds like an insider job or insider knowledge assisted ..

 

[ibrouting]

Not familiar with the Dahua NVR, but can you map it to One Drive to save videos in so if they steal the system you have a copy of the videos right up until the time where the unit was powered off?

 

[tigerwillow1]

Record events to an SD card in the camera.

 

[eggsan]

a Dahua NVR with eSata connection (external drive with power). The unit was installed into a custom wood cabinet (plain sight), hidden the drive just below the shelve (secret space below with separate power outlet). Normally, all cables are disconnected or cutted, taking only the NVR

 

[Mark_M]

How do you guys protect yourself from stolen NVRs? Recently dealing with a break in where they found the hidden Dahua NVR and took it as well. In this instance we believe it was an inside job as it seems they new exactly where NVR was hidden. Can Dahua backup to an external drive placed in a safe or something?

Grab yourself a cheap DVR/NVR off eBay, plug it in so the lights are blinking and leave it in an 'obvious' spot.
Just as a decoy. Then hide the actual NVR better.
You could even connect it to the network so that it works as another device to get a camera live view to a monitor (it just logs into the other NVR).


This should help weed out those that know where the NVR is. They'll see the decoy first and hopefully won't think that the actual one is somewhere else.
Particularly if this decoy NVR is actually doing work with a live monitor, that would easily fool someone.

 

[keeperofthecode]

Does anyone know of a network cabinet that uses better locks than the typical? Most cabinets just come with the lock that is just a metal bar that can be easily bent with a screwdriver.

 

[Gargoile]

Does anyone know of a network cabinet that uses better locks than the typical? Most cabinets just come with the lock that is just a metal bar that can be easily bent with a screwdriver.

What about installing the NVR in a large gun safe? I know it's over kill but it will get the job done. Anything can be taken if provided the time and the want to take.

Also when dealing with security equipment, the less people know the better. So I agree with the others here that this was an inside job.

If the cameras are IP then anywhere there is a network drop could be a place to be a NVR or NAS to store the data. You may also want to use a decoy NVR and tell all that is your security recorder so they "think" they got it but only you know there is a back up that you never told anyone. Also stated is offsite storage is a plus. It just depends on how elaborate you want your resiliency to be.

 

[Teken]

I’ve been using this fake / hidden wall concept for years at home and in commercial installs.

Really comes down to the environment and a person’s creativity. In one install a new home was designed with a highly fortified and fireproof enclosure hidden in the vented floor space that houses the network infrastructure.

Surprisingly, the hardest part was to design a compartment that could provide eight hours of burn time along with wiring that could sustain the same. All of the wiring was incapsulated in four layers of various fire rated materials.

The last portion was spraying the entire conduit with 4” of fire proof foam normally used for exposed metal girders.

The entire race way also incorporated a dedicated fire suppression system based on the halon replacement used today.

No air - no fire . . .

The funniest and best part of the enclosure is the fact the client some how obtained a man hole cover?!?

When the guys dropped it off at the shop on my bench I said WTF??? The initial request was to some how incorporate this 250 ~ 300 lbs man hole cover with the security enclosure! Obviously it couldn’t be used as the primary door to the backup network system as a fire would make that giant cover into a hot plate.

Regardless, the man hole cover was used strictly as a fake top plate. Which sat approximately 8” from the real hatch.

It was a great install but sadly the client for whatever reason decided to use the cheapest HD’s not rated for 24.7.365 surveillance?!? About three years in we get a call from the wife asking us to come down to help retrieve the video data.

I asked where her husband was??

She said he was in the hospital with a burst disk . . .

The old guy supposedly tried to muscle the 250lbs cover by hand! The ceiling was fortified with a metal beam which had a winch and a back up come a long pulley system.

Never found out why the two weren’t used!

 

[Gargoile]

Also if this is in a business setting remember you can also go vertically. Installing this in a shorty IDF cabinet 10+ feet above the floor makes is less likely for someone to just run and and run out with the NVR.

 

[eggsan]

I’ve been using this fake / hidden wall concept for years at home and in commercial installs.

Really comes down to the environment and a person’s creativity. In one install a new home was designed with a highly fortified and fireproof enclosure hidden in the vented floor space that houses the network infrastructure.

Surprisingly, the hardest part was to design a compartment that could provide eight hours of burn time along with wiring that could sustain the same. All of the wiring was incapsulated in four layers of various fire rated materials.

The last portion was spraying the entire conduit with 4” of fire proof foam normally used for exposed metal girders.

The entire race way also incorporated a dedicated fire suppression system based on the halon replacement used today.

No air - no fire . . .

The funniest and best part of the enclosure is the fact the client some how obtained a man hole cover?!?

When the guys dropped it off at the shop on my bench I said WTF??? The initial request was to some how incorporate this 250 ~ 300 lbs man hole cover with the security enclosure! Obviously it couldn’t be used as the primary door to the backup network system as a fire would make that giant cover into a hot plate.

Regardless, the man hole cover was used strictly as a fake top plate. Which sat approximately 8” from the real hatch.

It was a great install but sadly the client for whatever reason decided to use the cheapest HD’s not rated for 24.7.365 surveillance?!? About three years in we get a call from the wife asking us to come down to help retrieve the video data.

I asked where her husband was??

She said he was in the hospital with a burst disk . . .

The old guy supposedly tried to muscle the 250lbs cover by hand! The ceiling was fortified with a metal beam which had a winch and a back up come a long pulley system.

Never found out why the two weren’t used!

in order to hide a security safe box, we included a pair of magnetic locks (300Lbs) at each side of a mirror, installed within a custom wooden cabinet. The hardware includes the magnalogs, power supply with battery backup (Altronix 6062), while the release key was design around a keystone jack in the wall (outside the wooden cabinet), using a shorted 3FT cat5 cable. Connecting the cable will release the door mirror, exposing the safe box. Unpluging the cat5 cable, will energize again the magnets. In order to disguise the "key", the customer mix the special cable within other network cables in a cabinet drawer. It could be used as well to hide sensitive products, but remember to extract the heat

 

[mat200]

Disguise the NVR as a crockpot, and no one will take it... trust me,.. seems like our family is re-gifting a crockpot from the 1970s ..

 

[Teken]

in order to hide a security safe box, we included a pair of magnetic locks (300Lbs) at each side of a mirror, installed within a custom wooden cabinet. The hardware includes the magnalogs, power supply with battery backup (Altronix 6062), while the release key was design around a keystone jack in the wall (outside the wooden cabinet), using a shorted 3FT cat5 cable. Connecting the cable will release the door mirror, exposing the safe box. Unpluging the cat5 cable, will energize again the magnets. In order to disguise the "key", the customer mix the special cable within other network cables in a cabinet drawer. It could be used as well to hide sensitive products, but remember to extract the heat

The smallest concealed enclosure we ever made used a Sapling IP clock. Given almost every clock is high mounted on a wall and in plain sight it made for a great hide away. Since this was strictly a backup system the NVR only needed to record for 72 hours in the worst case scenario if the main system was compromised.

I liked the idea so much the same was done at home but on a much grander scale!

 

[Gargoile]

I liked the idea so much the same was done at home but on a much grander scale!

Why do you have 3 Grandfather Clocks in your home ? LOL

 

[Teken]

Why do you have 3 Grandfather Clocks in your home ? LOL

 

[bp2008]

There are a number of approaches to backing up video data.

1. SD cards in each camera. You can expect some of the cards to fail after a few years of continuous writing, though, so it is something you'd have to check on periodically to make sure they were still working and creating usable video.

2. Back up the video to a NAS using FTP, SMB, NFS, etc. Western Digital MyCloud is a good choice for a basic cheap and small NAS with plenty of capacity. A raspberry pi could also be used as an even smaller NAS -- it just wont offer a comparable capacity per dollar compared to a MyCloud. If you don't have a good place to put one, you can even back up via the internet to the cloud or to an off-site storage device that you run yourself. Heck an IPCT+ membership even offers a basic FTP clip backup capability meant to be used with motion-triggered Blue Iris clips (best used with H.264 codec and MP4 recording format, but it can store BVR files too).

3. Run multiple complete NVRs. I run two Blue Iris boxes myself, although this is more for redundancy in case one fails, not to protect against NVR theft, as neither is hidden.

 

[iwanttosee]

My BlueIris box is setup to send me text with a picture when it detects person in the specific camera and hours I assign.

BlueIris can program to do so much more that the cheap Hikvision/Dahua nvr can do.