Employee theft at cannabis businesses is soaring all across the United States. According to Gary Cohen, CEO of Cova Software (a POS software supplier for cannabis-based businesses), both criminals and morally ambiguous employees are resorting to more creative and clandestine tactics than ever before to steal from cannabis companies. The absence of central regulation in the sector makes it almost too easy for these individuals to commit thefts and frauds that are virtually undetectable.
When compared to a hole in the storefront window or a glaring gap in inventory, these losses are substantially less noticeable and therefore almost always go unnoticed by upper management… until it’s too late. The steep increase in global instances of theft, fraud and malicious negligence in the cannabis sector has made it clear that these businesses need better surveillance.
Owing to the relative newness of the industry and a corresponding dearth of centralized operating procedures, the owners of these businesses are desperately vying to get a better grip on a seemingly impossible situation.
Common Security Problems
- Theft
According to Canopius Group, over 90 percent of the insurance claims filed by cannabis companies in recent years have been because of at least one form of theft. The majority of these reportedly involved access to privileged inside information, which helped the thieves assess and then target the vulnerabilities in the company’s existing surveillance systems.
- Negligence
Large volumes of hemp crops are either destroyed or left to rot every year due to human negligence. The problem arises because each variety of the plant requires differing amounts of light, water and attention in order to thrive.
Carelessness or mismanagement in this domain can cause severe and irreparable damage to the plants as a result of overwatering, sudden changes in the ambient temperature, or general pestilence. Traditional surveillance systems are not equipped to let companies constantly and effectively monitor their hemp farms or give them the level of attention they inevitably require.
The AI Difference
Despite its best efforts, traditional video surveillance does not provide the modern and innovative features needed to address the issues of theft and negligence. For instance, monitoring the conditions of every single plant on a cannabis farm is a job that human security personnel simply cannot do cheaply or efficiently. Instead, a smart and intuitive system that can actively monitor and predict the condition of hemp plants is a much more straightforward and permanent solution for owners of cannabis companies.
In comparison, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based surveillance is capable of monitoring the different attributes of each and every object in the frame; it has the ability to recognize and differentiate between faces, colors, shapes and sizes.
Additional features such as automated monitoring, facial-recognition algorithms, multi-camera screens, and the efficient management and storage of relevant data make AI-based surveillance systems a game-changer for the cannabis industry as a whole.
Moreover, video surveillance platform Cloudastructure ensures that any motion recorded by these cameras is automatically stored in the cloud (safe from tampering or theft) and can be accessed anytime and from anywhere, without even having to worry about the upkeep of a physical server.
Intuitive Software to Prevent Theft
Cloudastructure also makes it easy to collect and sift through surveillance data. Our cutting-edge software is powered by image-recognition technologies that tag and index every visible object including people, vehicles, backpacks, vaults, etc., making it significantly easier for cannabis businesses to store and reference information about possible ‘objects of concern.’ Furthermore, ingenious machine learning algorithms help the system remember and recognize these objects the next time they are captured on screen.
If your organization is still in its infancy and operates out of a single location, keeping track of the activities that take place on your premises is manageable and even simple. However, this will undoubtedly change rapidly as your business starts expanding. Widespread businesses require a powerful, reliable and scalable centralized surveillance system that can provide a consolidated view of all locations.
Cutting-edge intelligent monitoring systems actively store and analyze data in order to produce actionable insights for you and your company. These insights can help you pinpoint and subsequently solve the problems in your surveillance mechanisms.
Cloudastructure is at the forefront of innovation. We build intelligent, intuitive systems that can harness the power of AI to help strengthen your security systems. Different state-of-the-art features like advanced facial and object recognition, active object indexing and intuitive models that can predict events make our surveillance systems the best on the market. With Cloudastructure’s surveillance systems, you get the best in modern AI and cloud storage technology for your business.
Cloudastructure’s surveillance systems help cannabis entrepreneurs detect theft, and other covert practices, that would otherwise be almost impossible to detect. Hence, Cloudastructure’s surveillance software can play an instrumental role in keeping your businesses safe and under control. More importantly, it can give you the peace of mind you need to keep expanding.
