Security System Autopsy Today’s cause of death: water ingress.

I had some of our Veritech engineers in the office today, to investigate the untimely death of a CCTV camera.

The victim: an external camera.

The suspected cause: water ingress.
The possible culprits: a damaged seal, an incorrectly fitted cable gland, poor positioning—or insufficient preventative maintenance.
It made for a slightly unusual photograph, but there is a serious engineering message behind it.

Water entering a camera, detector, junction box or cable connection can cause corrosion, intermittent faults, poor image quality, unreliable detection and, ultimately, complete equipment failure.

What concerns me most is that the equipment may continue to appear operational while the damage is quietly developing inside it.
That is why good security engineering involves far more than choosing an expensive camera and fixing it to a wall. Every seal, connection, housing, cable route and mounting position must be suitable for the environment in which it will operate.

Even equipment with the correct weather-resistance rating can fail if it is installed incorrectly, becomes damaged or is not properly maintained.

I am proud that our engineers do not simply replace failed equipment and move on. They investigate why it failed, look for wider vulnerabilities and consider how we can prevent the same problem from happening again.

Final verdict: the camera did not die of natural causes.

It was preventable.