Scaling Campus Security with Smarter Surveillance Storage

College and university campuses are investing more in surveillance technology than ever before, and for good reason. Today’s security strategies reflect growing demands for transparency, compliance, and safety. In 2024, more than 8 in 10 educational institutions reported relying on security cameras daily, according to Campus Safety Magazine, and surveillance footage often aids in investigations post-incident. On every part of campus, surveillance systems have become essential to safety and student experiences. But as more institutions expand their coverage, upgrade resolution, and lengthen retention periods, the storage burden is growing dramatically.  

Adding cameras is the easy part. Storing, retrieving, and securing sensitive and protected data efficiently is where things get complicated and expensive. For many schools, long-term retention of surveillance video is an important compliance requirement. Yet limited budgets and outdated storage infrastructure often mean trade-offs, like deleting valuable footage early or sacrificing video quality.  

Let’s take a look at why traditional surveillance storage strategies are falling short in education, and how forward-thinking IT leaders are using the cloud to manage rising costs, complexity, and compliance demands.  

The growing scope of campus surveillance 

Surveillance in higher education has moved far beyond the occasional hallway camera. College campuses are unique in that students both learn and live in the same spaces, and the sprawling campuses expand the complexity of coverage and compliance. Surveillance practices are evolving to meet new standards in safety, compliance, and liability protection. Today, it’s a full-scale ecosystem of video tools operating across multiple departments:  

• Fixed security cameras monitor academic buildings, dorm entrances, athletic facilities, and more. They often record around the clock in high definition.  

• Body cameras on university police forces offer on-the-go coverage and are sometimes mandated by state or institutional policies.  

• Vehicle-mounted cameras on patrol cars extend visibility across large or multi-campus environments.  

• Other video tools like smart analytics are in use on some campuses for motion detection, facial recognition, or reading license plates.  

All this adds up to a massive increase in surveillance data volume, and the need for surveillance isn’t slowing down. Berry College in northwest Georgia found itself generating 4–5 TB of footage daily, filling local servers and complicating backup. Higher-resolution footage, longer retention windows, and continuous recording mean institutions are collecting and storing more data than ever before, and they’re expected to have it ready at a moment’s notice.  

The storage and compliance challenge of surveillance footage 

For colleges and universities, the challenge isn’t just the volume of surveillance footage; it’s the compliance obligations that come with it. Video that can identify students is considered part of their educational record under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which means schools must control access, maintain logs, and treat footage as sensitive data. Incidents may require video to be retained for extended periods to preserve evidence, and institutions must prove that original files remain unaltered while providing copies for investigations. In many cases, footage is also shared with law enforcement agencies under Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements, further raising the bar for secure storage and chain-of-custody practices. 

Navigating compliance is no simple task. Educational institutions face requirements like: 

• Retention mandates, often driven by state law or institutional policies, dictate how long footage must be kept. Retention periods can be 30, 60, or 90 days, or even more. With 7 in 10 schools reporting that their video surveillance systems frequently provide evidence for investigations, sufficient long-term storage is critical.  

• Industry-specific compliance standards, like FERPA for student privacy, or Clery Act requirements that call for accurate security reporting.  

• Accessibility mandates that ensure that footage can be quickly retrieved for investigations, audits, or public records requests.  

These mandates carry real consequences for non-compliance, and on-premises infrastructure simply can’t keep up. Most legacy systems weren’t built for this degree of scale, complexity, or proactiveness. The result is expensive frustration:  

• Institutions often hit capacity walls, forcing them to overwrite footage prematurely and creating potential blind spots.  

• Hardware upgrades are both costly and time-consuming, frequently requiring capital expenditure cycles that can’t keep pace with growth.  

• Retrieval delays from on-prem systems can be hours or longer, preventing quick response and compliance. 

Meeting modern surveillance needs without the cloud is costly. Institutions have few choices: they can invest heavily in new hardware, networking, and backup infrastructure, or they can manage complex tiering and deduplication policies that still don’t solve retention or accessibility issues. Otherwise, they’re forced to accept limited capacity and inconsistent availability, putting compliance and safety at risk. 

Catawba College is an excellent example of an institution facing the challenges of a legacy storage system. Before modernizing their storage infrastructure, the college could only keep two weeks of video footage on hand. Anything older had to be deleted to make room for new data. The college recognized the risk and the need for greater retention flexibility, so they turned to an affordable cloud solution with Wasabi.  

Cloud storage and cost predictability 

Cloud storage can sound like an ideal solution until the fees show up. Hyperscale cloud providers offer scalable storage on demand, but their pricing models are complex and have additional costs that can catch campus IT teams off guard. Many hyperscale cloud providers charge additional fees for:  

• Uploading video footage (PUT requests) 

• Retrieving footage for review (GET requests) 

• Cross-region transfers or remote playback 

• Previewing, listing, or searching files 

In other words: every time you record, review, investigate, or export footage, you might incur fees. This unpredictable cost structure makes it incredibly difficult for IT teams to budget or scale confidently. 

Whether you’re overseeing a K-12 district or a large university, your surveillance strategy needs to check a few boxes: 

• Scalability to accommodate growing camera counts and resolutions 

• Instant access for investigations and public safety requests 

• Compliance-ready retention without requiring constant lifecycle management 

• Predictable cost to satisfy procurement and budget oversight teams 

Unfortunately, traditional cloud providers and legacy on-prem systems rarely deliver all four. 

How Wasabi Surveillance Cloud solves the problem   

Traditional surveillance storage comes with tradeoffs. Expand your on-prem setup, and you're hit with major hardware costs. Move to a hyperscale cloud, and you’re stuck paying fees every time you upload, retrieve, or search your footage. Neither option is built for the realities of education, where schools need to store high-res video for months (or years) and access it quickly for audits, investigations, or safety reviews. 

Wasabi Surveillance Cloud changes that. It integrates directly with existing video management systems (VMS) and storage environments. Schools and universities can automatically tier footage from their on-prem systems or primary storage to the cloud without disrupting their current workflows (check out the Cloud Adoption Roadmap for more). 

Once in Wasabi, your footage stays safe and accessible, with no retrieval fees or hidden costs for access. You can store high-resolution video for as long as you need and stop worrying about which clips you might need later. And with secure APIs and fine-grained access controls, IT and public safety teams maintain full control. 

Why it works for education: 

• Predictable storage costs with no fees for access or API calls 

• Fast retrieval of archived footage for audits or investigations 

• No cold storage delays or capacity planning headaches

• Meets retention and compliance requirements with encryption, object lock, and data immutability

• Compatible with the tools you already use

For higher ed campuses, K-12 districts, or any institution managing hundreds of cameras, Wasabi Surveillance Cloud offers a scalable, sustainable solution that lets you keep high-resolution footage longer without going over budget.  

As Jason Murphine of Berry College put it: “It’s our data. It’s nice to get it when we need it, without having to worry about surprise costs or second-guessing whether we should access it.” 

Explore a smarter way to retain surveillance footage 

Educational institutions face unique surveillance challenges: growing camera networks, strict retention mandates, and limited budgets. The old ways can’t keep up. 

Wasabi Surveillance Cloud was purpose-built to help campuses overcome these challenges. By offering secure, long-term storage at a fraction of the cost of traditional options and eliminating unpredictable access fees, Wasabi helps schools keep their footage, protect their people, and meet regulatory requirements without compromise.