Cameras stop working after installing Security Center with the default security options - After installing Security Center using default security settings, cameras that do not support digest access authentication might not work. To fix this issue, you can reactivate basic access authentication by video unit or by manufacturer. - Security Center 5.9 - 5.13

Troubleshooting video units and cameras in Security Center
Product
Security Center
Content type
Troubleshooting
Version
5.13
5.12
5.11
5.10
5.9
ft:locale
en-US
Last updated
2026-01-09

After installing Security Center using default security settings, cameras that do not support digest access authentication might not work. To fix this issue, you can reactivate basic access authentication by video unit or by manufacturer.

What you should know

Digest access authentication is the authentication scheme that most recent video unit models support. This authentication scheme is more secure than basic access authentication because the passwords are hashed before sending them over the network. For this reason, basic access authentication is disabled by default.

After installation, if you realize that some of your cameras don't support digest access authentication, you can revert them to basic access authentication in Config Tool.

For added security, Security Center remembers whether or not a specific video unit supports the digest authentication scheme. You can see the authentication scheme used for each camera in the Hardware inventory report.
NOTE: After the system successfully authenticates to a video unit using the digest scheme, you cannot revert to the less secure basic scheme.

Procedure

To reactivate basic authentication on a specific video unit:

  1. From Config Tool, open the Hardware inventory task.
  2. Run the report on the video units that are inactive (in red) in your system.
    You might need to scroll horizontally to the right to see the Authentication scheme column.
  3. In the report pane, select the inactive video units and click Reset authentication scheme.
    The Authentication scheme changes to Anonymous. After the Archiver successfully connects to the video unit, the exact authentication scheme is displayed.

To reactivate basic authentication for a specific manufacturer:

  1. From Config Tool, open the Video task.
  2. Select the Archiver role that controls your cameras and click Extensions.
  3. Select the manufacturer that you want and turn off Refuse basic authentication.
  4. Click Apply.