How intelligent search works in Security Center SaaS

2026-03-04

You can start an investigation and take advantage of intelligent search functions in the Investigation task or directly from any video monitoring tile. The collected camera metadata varies by manufacturer and the camera's forensic capabilities.

Important:

Intelligent search functions are not supported for federated cameras. In this situation, the icon is greyed out.

Two ways to initiate an investigation

There are two ways to initiate an investigation using intelligent search:

Intelligent search from the Investigation task

Use this feature to find a person or vehicle of interest based on description, an approximate time range, or the incident location, including one or more cameras. Natural language search speeds up the search, and filters help refine the results.

Note:

Intelligent search from the Investigation task only works with forensic-capable cameras that have the Activate camera metadata checkbox selected.

Intelligent search from a monitoring tile

Use this feature to locate a person or object when you notice something of interest while monitoring or reviewing video, or when a reported incident includes a date, approximate time, and the camera that recorded it. Object detection tracks scene changes, detect entries and exits, and highlights related nearby activity.

Intelligent search from a monitoring tile (person detection): Can be initiated from a non forensic-capable camera for entry and exit detection and finding a person of interest. Other results (similar people, nearby activity, and so on) come from forensic-capable cameras with the Activate camera metadata checkbox selected.

Intelligent search from a monitoring tile (Investigate changes)

You can trigger intelligent search from a monitoring tile using a non forensic-capable camera. The results (nearby activity and entry and exit detections) come from forensic-capable cameras with the Activate camera metadata checkbox selected. Object detection searches display the object entry and exit points over time. If the camera is not forensic-capable, you will not see nearby activity.

After the object is located, you can expand your search results by using the following:

Entry and exit detection: Instantly locate entry and exit events using scene-based detection. Draw a box around objects such as unattended luggage, a laptop, boxes, suspect packages, vehicles, or any other items in the scene to pinpoint critical moments.
Similar people: Find possible matches for individuals across multiple locations using visual matching algorithms.
Nearby activity: Discover what happened before or after an incident by finding nearby activity within a selected time range. Then review the results to reconstruct possible suspicious activities or verify movements before and after an incident.