Alarms and video surveillance for businesses in Nice and the Alpes-Maritimes

The three answer different questions, and they are rarely combined at random. An intruder alarm detects an unauthorised entry and triggers a response: siren, notification, verification. It protects the hours when the premises are closed. Video surveillance prevents nothing on its own: it deters, it records, and it provides usable footage after the event. Access control handles the everyday: who comes in, where, at what times, and it lets you withdraw an access right in seconds when a badge is lost or an employee leaves.

For a shop in Nice, video and an alarm are usually the priority. For a practice or a design office in Sophia Antipolis holding sensitive data, access control on the technical rooms matters more. We start from the real risk and from the floor plan, not from a catalogue.

In four stages, and it always starts with a visit. Site visit: a survey of the entrances, the blind spots, the areas that must not be filmed, the power points and the existing cable routes. Layout plan: the number and position of cameras, detectors and readers, stating for each camera what it sees and what it does not. Installation: cabling, mounting, connection to your network and to the power supply, with the recorder placed in a locked room. Handover: access configured, the authorised people trained, and written documentation.

The cabling follows the same rules as the rest of your infrastructure: clean routes, labelled links, terminated in the cabinet. That is also what makes the installation repairable years later, by us or by somebody else.

Filming people is processing of personal data: it follows precise rules, and a non-compliant installation is also one whose footage will be unusable. Four obligations come up every time. Inform the people being filmed with a visible sign at every entrance to a monitored area, and inform employees individually. Consult the works council before the system goes live, where one exists. Record the system in the register of processing activities, with its purpose, its retention period and the list of people authorised to view the footage. Limit the field of view: no camera permanently trained on a workstation, nor on break areas, changing rooms or union offices.

Where cameras film a space open to the public, a prefectural authorisation is required as well. We prepare these elements with you and hand you the written file: without it, the installation is a legal risk as much as a security tool.

Applicable framework: the GDPR, the French labour code (information and consultation), the French internal security code for spaces open to the public, and the CNIL guidance on video surveillance in the workplace. To be validated by your own legal adviser before the system goes live.

Because an IP camera is a computer sitting on your network. Shipped with a default password, firmware that is never updated and an admin interface sometimes reachable from the internet, it becomes exactly the kind of open door we spend our days closing for our clients. We have seen video surveillance installations used as the foothold for an intrusion onto the office network.

So we treat cameras, the recorder and the badge readers like the rest of the estate: a dedicated network kept separate from the office network, passwords changed and recorded, firmware kept up to date, remote access closed by default and opened only through an encrypted channel, and a recorder that is physically out of reach. That is the crossover no general installer makes, and it is why this service belongs in our cybersecurity silo.

The budget depends on the number of points to cover, on the length of cabling and on the nature of the premises — an open-plan office is not handled like a warehouse or a ground-floor shop. The costing is set out on the quotation, drawn up after the site visit: costing a security installation without having been on site makes no sense.

The visit and the layout plan are included in the free audit when the request comes alongside IT security work. You leave with the number of cameras actually needed — often fewer than the number you were offered elsewhere.