Reprinted Story from Hanwha Vision America

Jordan Rivchun, Senior Director of Business Development, Hanwha Vision America
Kevin Darnell, Business Development Director, Hanwha Vision America

When selecting video surveillance systems, security, IT, and operations teams can all play vital and complementary roles.

Better collaboration helps companies to maximize the benefits of AI in security, optimize budgets, and successfully mitigate risks, especially those related to cybersecurity and network capabilities.

Ideally, every situation would involve seamless teamwork leading to smooth deployments.

But in reality, we know that alignment between departments doesn’t always go as planned. So, as a security professional, what can you do when you have to bridge a gap between IT or operations?

Below, we provide some of our recommended best practices to spur organizational alignment and understanding. These tips stem from our experiences at Hanwha Vision and combined 40+ years working as surveillance and loss prevention leaders with major global retailers.

Building A Culture of Collaboration & Cross Functional Understanding

Strategic & Sequential Approaches

Developing Collaborative Vendor Evaluation Criteria

Together, security, IT, and operations team members can create aligned vendor selection criteria terms. Consider scoring potential AI surveillance vendors on various factors, including:

Data security posture/cybersecurity credentials (SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, FIPS)
Model transparency(explainability, no “black-box” biases)
Track record of success serving your industry
Integration ease (APIs, SDKs, compatibility with existing VMS/NVR)
Total cost of ownership (license fees, hardware acceleration needs, ongoing support)
Vendor’s commitment to sustainability

Transparency & Celebrating Shared Success

At the start a surveillance installation project, it’s important to align on cybersecurity priorities with the overall business objectives. Ensure all key stakeholders collaborate on identifying and evaluating potential threats and vulnerabilities.

To promote transparency in decision-making and product selection, consider creating joint planning meetings to review security reports and a product manufacturers’ cybersecurity credentials. When teams tackle challenges together—whether it’s resolving vulnerabilities or optimizing performance— it usually fosters mutual respect and shared responsibility.

Looking for a smart and easy way to improve collaboration?

Work with human resources or C-suite business leaders to create rewards or recognition programs that celebrate joint, cross-functional achievements. Done right and consistently, we have seen this approach quickly break down silos and reinforce a culture of collaboration.

Governance & Accountability

We have seen customers generate great results by creating AI Surveillance Steering Committees with reps from security, IT, legal/compliance, and operations all playing valued roles.

Some of the committee’s key efforts can include drafting a user/usage policy that clearly defines who has access to view surveillance footage, guidelines for video retention, audit-trail requirements, and more. Common KPIs like — percent of false positives detected, patch-cycle adherence, total number of incident detections and corresponding response times — should are typically reviewed at monthly/quarterly governance meetings.

We have also seen companies successfully create committees that have full oversight of AI technology deployment, execution, and evaluation.

These groups are either led by a chief AI officer, or by a combination of IT, security, and other business leaders. Typically, in this set up, surveillance is one of many functions that are handled by the AI Committee.

Closing Thoughts

Collaboration isn’t always easy. But it’s essential for driving both innovation and protection.

One of the most valuable outcomes of cross-functional collaboration is the ability to build a strong, data-backed ROI model.

By bringing together security, IT, operations, and compliance leaders, organizations can define the right performance metrics—such as incident reduction, response time improvements, system uptime, and operational efficiencies. Each team contributes unique insights that help identify cost drivers, efficiency gains, and measurable outcomes.

With this collective input, businesses can quantify both direct savings and indirect benefits, creating a clear ROI model that justifies initial investments and guides future budget decisions.