Leveraging Cloud Recording for Improved Resiliency and Compliance
Eventide Communications LLC has been at the forefront of designing, coding, and building stable purpose-built Linux appliances for recording and storing court-admissible evidence in the form of telephone and radio audio since the late 1980s. Over three decades, storage methods for these crucial recordings have evolved from DAT Tapes to CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray removable media. As technology has progressed, cloud recording has become a vital part of improving resiliency and ensuring the availability of these recordings, even in the face of natural or man-made disasters.
The Evolution of Recording Storage and Resiliency
In the past, organizations would store recordings on-premises for months or years until court cases or issues were resolved. These recordings were often manually moved off-site to protect against potential disasters that could destroy or render them unusable. As technologies advanced, recording storage moved to larger RAID 1, 5, or 10 disk arrays, capable of storing millions of hours of recording that can be easily accessed and stored online for years.
Resiliency and backup for these primary recordings transitioned to Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, ideally located in separate rooms or buildings from where the recording occurred. Copies of the recordings on the recorder would be automatically moved in near real-time over Local Area Network (LAN) or even a Wide Area Network (WAN) for continuous backup in case of failure with the recorder or the building. This resiliency has saved thousands of Eventide customers’ money and reputation by providing the court or media with the evidence to prove their organization was not liable.
Embracing the Cloud for Enhanced Resiliency
The 2010s saw another leap in resiliency with the adoption of cloud-based services, where copies of recordings and their metadata are stored in data centers hundreds or thousands of miles from an organization’s premises. This has become an ideal way to ensure that recordings from the last few months or years can be accessed and used in court cases or to resolve issues, even if a flood, tornado, fire, earthquake, or a man-made disaster renders a facility unusable for days, weeks, months, or years. The affordability, reliability, and connectivity of cloud computing have made this type of resiliency accessible to most organizations. Let’s start by asking, what is AWS GovCloud?
What is Amazon AWS GovCloud?
In 2022, Eventide released its NexLog CloudSync offering after years of development and a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). NexLog CloudSync automatically and continuously moves copies of recordings from a premise-based NexLog DX-Series recorder in near real-time to a highly secure and resilient AWS GovCloud instance, which is used by many state, local, and federal agencies. This cloud storage and replay partnership ensures AWS GovCloud compliance, providing organizations with peace of mind knowing that their data is secure and compliant with necessary regulations.
AWS GovCloud is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) region designed to host sensitive data, regulate workloads, and address the most stringent U.S. government security and compliance requirements. It is an isolated AWS region that allows U.S. government agencies and customers with regulatory requirements to run workloads in the cloud while ensuring compliance with specific regulations and standards.
Eventide’s NexLogTM CloudSync and AWS GovCloud Compliance
In 2022, Eventide released its NexLog CloudSync offering after years of development and a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). NexLog CloudSync automatically and continuously moves copies of recordings from a premise-based NexLog DX-Series recorder in near real-time to a highly secure and resilient AWS GovCloud instance, which is used by many state, local, and federal agencies. This cloud storage and replay partnership ensures AWS GovCloud compliance, providing organizations with peace of mind knowing that their data is secure and compliant with necessary regulations.
Benefits of NexLog CloudSync
NexLog CloudSync offers several benefits to mission-critical dispatch organizations beyond geo-diverse resiliency, which preserves and allows for search, playback, and compilation of court-admissible evidence and export to attorneys or other interested parties from historical recordings. In the event of a natural or man-made disaster that may shut down dispatch operations, work with historical data can continue.
Continuity in Emergency Situations
Suppose a structure fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, chemical release, or civil unrest forces personnel to evacuate the primary facility. In that case, the recordings and metadata will continue to be available to personnel from the NexLog CloudSync recorder.If there is a secondary site they can evacuate to or any location with internet access, personnel can access those recordings from their AWS GovCloud-hosted NexLog CloudSync. Should their secondary site have a NexLog DX-Series recorder, it can continue to be backed up into the same NexLog CloudSync as the primary site’s NexLog. As more natural disasters occur worldwide, geo-diverse resiliency has become increasingly essential for protecting mission-critical dispatch operations in 911, air traffic control, the Department of Defense, airlines, airports, and other transportation organizations. This allows these industries to protect themselves with the truth of what occurred while safeguarding the public should operational failures lead to harm for individuals or groups.
Consolidated Use of Decentralized NexLog DXs
Eventide customers often have multiple NexLog DXs distributed throughout a building, city, state, country or even parts of the world. NexLog CloudSync allows those recordings to be accessed and used from an AWS GovCloud site from virtually anywhere with an internet connection. Access restrictions can be configured with two-factor authentication, specific IP addresses, or geo-fenced IP addresses to protect access to the cloud recordings, ensuring that only authorized entities can access them.
Simplified Deployment and Resource Sharing
The consolidation benefit of NexLog CloudSync can be quickly and securely deployed without engineering networking paths across multiple LANs and WANs within or across numerous organizations. In states actively funding consolidation and cooperation between agencies, NexLog CloudSync offers a simple way to share resources, back each other up, and maintain separation in a multitenant environment for relatively little expense and infrastructure engineering.
Business Intelligence and NexLog CloudSync
The 2010s saw another leap in resiliency with the adoption of cloud-based services, where copies of recordings and their metadata are stored in data centers hundreds or thousands of miles from an organization’s premises. This has become an ideal way to ensure that recordings from the last few months or years can be accessed and used in court cases or to resolve issues, even if a flood, tornado, fire, earthquake, or a man-made disaster renders a facility unusable for days, weeks, months, or years. The affordability, reliability, and connectivity of cloud computing have made this type of resiliency accessible to most organizations. Let’s start by asking, what is AWS GovCloud?
In today’s world, Eventide records more than audio from two to four communication systems. They capture valuable metadata associated with voice communications, including caller ID, dialed number, caller location, push-to-talk IDs, talk group IDs, agent IDs, and call detail records. With Eventide’s CAD integrations, Average Speed of Answer, Time to Dispatch, Number of Holds and Transfers, Nature of Calls, Disposition of Calls, and many other pieces of information, data can be consolidated in one system and readily made available for a holistic view of events.
Enhanced Quality Assurance and Reporting
With NexLog CloudSync’s business intelligence, users can access robust quality assurance and dynamic, user-friendly reporting tools to extract actionable intelligence from all the accumulated data captured by NexLog. This data can be delivered automatically at any frequency and to whoever needs to act on it. The data can also be shown against performance goals, allowing people to effectively measure and achieve their hourly, daily, monthly, or annual performance goals.
Improved Performance Across Multiple Sites
NexLog CloudSync’s ability to consolidate data from multiple premise-based NexLogs can enhance an organization’s overall performance across multiple sites worldwide. By leveraging the power of AWS GovCloud and NexLog CloudSync, organizations can achieve better resiliency, compliance, and business intelligence, ensuring the protection and accessibility of crucial recordings for years.
Cloud Recording with Eventide’s NexLog CloudSync
Eventide offers advanced cloud recording and archiving solutions to meet the needs of any organization. Choices include NexLog recorders hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), NexLog cloud archivers hosted on AWS, NexLog recorders on public/private VMWare Cloud, and archiving to cloud-based Network Attached Storage (NAS) services.
AWS GovCloud Compliance and Security
Eventide NexLog CloudSync is hosted in Amazon’s AWS GovCloud, which specializes in supporting mission-critical workloads and meets all AWS GovCloud compliance mandates. The recordings and metadata are backed up to the cloud within seconds of being recorded. They are secured end-to-end between the source NexLog recorder and NexLog CloudSync, using 256-bit industry-standard encryption.
Disaster Recovery and Data Retention
NexLog CloudSync provides off-site disaster recovery without building new infrastructure, minimizing downtime and data loss for fast, reliable disaster recovery. Archived recordings are available immediately in the event of a primary site outage. For automated management of retention compliance, retention settings can be easily configured for each channel or resource.
Enhancing Business Intelligence with NexLog CloudSync Options
Options are available that can enhance an agency’s business intelligence by aggregating data from different silos into actionable information. Artificial intelligence capability can also be added for automated quality assurance for emergency medical dispatch regulatory requirements or performance improvement. Voice analytics, word and phrase spotting and alerting, call segmentations, faster redaction of specific words, and more can benefit from artificial intelligence fed by NexLog CloudSync. NexLog CloudSync is sold and supported through Eventide’s network of trusted local dealers, ensuring organizations can confidently rely on their recording solutions.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, Eventide’s NexLog DX-Series communications recorders and NexLog CloudSync offer a comprehensive solution for organizations that require reliable, secure, and accessible communication recording in mission-critical environments. Over the years, Eventide has evolved its technologies to adapt to the changing needs of industries, providing advanced cloud recording solutions that address the challenges of data storage, resiliency, and compliance. With the integration of AWS GovCloud, Eventide has taken yet another step forward in enhancing the capabilities of their recording systems, ensuring that organizations can safeguard their valuable data and maintain operational continuity in the face of potential disasters.
Leveraging the power of cloud computing, Eventide’s NexLog CloudSync offers geo-diverse resiliency and enables the consolidation of decentralized NexLog DXs, facilitating the sharing of resources and cooperation between agencies. Furthermore, NexLog CloudSync provides valuable business intelligence by aggregating data from various sources and offering advanced analytics capabilities. As a result, organizations can make more informed decisions, achieve their performance goals, and ensure the quality of their critical communications.
Ultimately, Eventide’s commitment to continuous innovation and development in the field of communication recording makes them a trusted partner for public safety, air traffic control, utilities, government and defense, and other critical communication users. By utilizing Eventide’s NexLog DX-Series communications recorders and NexLog CloudSync, organizations can be confident in the protection, accessibility, and resiliency of their crucial recordings while benefiting from the improved security, compliance, and efficiency that these advanced solutions provide.
