A thief breaks into an unguarded area of a wind farm to steal copper. A security camera triggers an instant alert, pinpointing the exact location and time of the incident. Authorities are en route before the thief finishes the job.
That alert came from a SentryPODS unit built by Smart Digital, a veteran-owned, U.S.-based security company that builds, assembles, and supports end-to-end security camera solutions. Smart Digital solutions combine military-inspired operational principles with enterprise-grade tech to deliver platforms that protect people, property, and critical infrastructure.
“SentryPODS are designed to be deployed instantly, giving the customer better visibility and increasing the security posture of their site or facility,” said Smart Digital CEO and Founder Brent Canfield.
Real life demands real-time coverage
Canfield, a former U.S. Marine Corps Combat Platoon Sergeant, founded Smart Digital with the belief that physical security needed to be more autonomous, mobile, and immediate. Six years later, Smart Digital launched SentryPODS in response to demand for an autonomous surveillance platform.
“Our customers want a solution that stops a threat while it’s happening, not that shows footage of a theft,” said Smart Digital Sales Development Representative Jeremy Salmons.
Traditional physical security systems are slow to deploy, heavily reliant on wired internet and electrical infrastructure, and difficult to manage across temporary or mobile locations. Trenching fiber is expensive and time-consuming, limiting unit deployment.
Bandwidth was a separate limit. When unlimited 4G plans disappeared, Smart Digital had to cap how much video a customer could pull from their own site, restricting the service rather than the network restricting it for them.
Smart Digital needed to get SentryPODS units online almost instantly on a connection that could carry multiple high-definition feeds and scale with a growing fleet.
Verizon gives us autonomy, speed, and reliability in remote areas that don't have internet access. Our devices can access the internet anywhere there is a Verizon 5G or LTE network.
Brent Canfield, CEO and Founder, Smart Digital
Pre-provisioned SIMs accelerate activation
Verizon rose to the challenge. Today, more than 90% of deployed SentryPODS units run on its network, allowing customers to stream continuous HD video feeds from one or more cameras into a 24/7 operations center or their own server.
Every unit comes pre-loaded with a Verizon SIM card, connecting to the internet as soon as it's activated. Verizon's 5G and LTE Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) supplies the high-throughput, low-latency pipeline needed for streaming, thermal telemetry, and live AI alerts from remote or temporary sites, with no cap on how much video a customer pulls.
“Once a customer powers up the unit, they are automatically connected to the internet,” Canfield said. “Our onboarding team sets up the metrics and the site security parameters for the customer to receive notifications in the event of an intrusion.”
Edge AI detects potential perimeter breaches in real time, sending alerts to a 24/7 UL-listed Central Station. Operators at Smart Digital's monitoring partner verify threats within seconds and can dispatch law enforcement immediately.
“The Verizon partnership is a core component of our capacity to even run the SentryPODS business,” said Smart Digital Systems Integration Engineer Jon Howard. “The communications method is essentially the heart and soul of being able to reliably perform this remote surveillance capability.”
Managing hundreds of units without field visits
As Smart Digital's SentryPODS fleet grows, managing the connectivity behind hundreds of remote units becomes a separate operational discipline. Verizon ThingSpace gives Smart Digital's engineering team self-service control over that fleet through zero-touch SIM provisioning and over-the-air activation, from taking lines up and down to mapping every SIM and IMEI to its individual unit.
Before ThingSpace, bringing new lines online meant emailing an account rep with IMEIs and waiting what could be hours for a response. Because activation was unpredictable, engineers provisioned SIMs a week or more ahead of a deployment, just to be certain the lines would be live when units shipped.
“Activating a line prior to ThingSpace could take a few hours,” Howard said. “Now I can activate a line in a couple of minutes.”
The shift cuts line setup time by around 95%. Instead of guessing at a deployment schedule a week out, the team can decide the number of units it wants online and activate those SIMs minutes before the hardware ships, without paying for lines that sit idle.
Together, Verizon FWA and ThingSpace help Smart Digital fulfill its promise of having SentryPODS up and running in three to five minutes without costly truck rolls.
The Verizon partnership is a core component of our capacity to even run the SentryPODS business. The communications method is essentially the heart and soul of being able to reliably perform this remote surveillance capability.
Jon Howard, Systems Integration Engineer, Smart Digital
We know we have the coverage, we know we have the backbone, we know we have the speed.
Ron Senchak, Sr. Director of Verizon Midwest Business-to-Business Markets
Working together to close the security gap
For Smart Digital customers, dropped connections can increase security risks. ThingSpace works as a diagnostic engine, allowing engineers to verify network health in the area immediately. They can rule the Verizon network in or out and isolate the physical cause, such as a damaged or blocked antenna, equipment powered down without notice, or a metal fence beside the antenna acting as a Faraday cage.
“[ThingSpace] vastly accelerates our ability to determine it's not a Verizon network issue,” Howard said. “It turns what could have been easily a half-hour slog into a couple of minutes.”
Smart Digital involves Verizon early in product development, collaborating on coverage validation, signal optimization, and solution design.
"The relationship is truly a partnership. As they come out with new products and new solutions, they immediately get us involved,” Senchak said.
Security that arrives before the loss
SentryPODS units have helped customers detect copper theft, protect data centers and telecommunications sites, and support monitoring through severe weather, including 85+ mph hurricanes. In many cases, trenching fiber wasn’t an option.
“We potentially save customers hundreds of thousands of dollars on not having to pull in main infrastructure where they might only have a temporary need,” Canfield said.
The combination of live video, AI threat detection, and human verification reduces false alarms, giving Smart Digital’s customers what Salmons describes as “pre-insurance”: a proactive security posture designed to prevent losses rather than document them afterward.
Alongside Verizon, Smart Digital continues to build perimeter security solutions that can be deployed in austere locations, confident that the network can support the next site—wherever it is.