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Prerequisites

Understand who GC Surge is for, required organizational roles, technical and network prerequisites, supported camera brands, and trial limitations. GC Surge is built for organizations where alarm volume is too high for manual review of every event. The platform serves five customer profiles: Covers: Who Is GC Surge For, Required Roles, Technical Prerequisites.

Who Is GC Surge For

GC Surge is built for organizations where alarm volume is too high for manual review of every event. The platform delivers measurable impact when all three entry thresholds are met: 250+ cameras per operator (or 63+ equivalent towers per operator), 5,000+ total daily alarms across the centre, and multi-monitor mode (cameras or platform generate video alarms — not video-verification-only). Below these thresholds the platform works, but the operational gains are less reliably achieved. The platform serves five customer profiles:

Security Monitoring Centers — centralized alarm triage operations replacing legacy monitoring software with AI-assisted alarm processing.
Enterprise Security Teams — internal security departments managing multi-facility camera networks.
Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) — organizations providing video monitoring as a managed service.
Security Integrators — companies that install and provision surveillance infrastructure and need a cloud platform without on-premises hardware.
Hybrid Teams — operations combining internal operators with contracted monitoring on a shared platform.

Required Roles

Two platform roles must be in place before the trial can begin:

Super Admin — responsible for account setup, site creation, user invitations, and subscription management. Must be available throughout onboarding.
Operator — reviews and closes alarms in ZenMode. At least 2–3 operators are needed for a meaningful trial evaluation.

Technical Prerequisites

Before starting your trial, confirm the following:

Cameras are installed, powered on, and connected to the internet.
Cameras are a supported brand capable of SMTP or FTP event forwarding (see Supported Camera Brands below).
Camera firmware is reasonably current — outdated firmware can block automatic SMTP configuration.
You have the following ready before starting: site name, camera brand, and approximate camera count per site. If someone else will complete field activation (you are not on-site yourself), also have their name and phone number ready. Keep each site’s physical address on hand for dispatching your on-site contact — it is operational information only and is not a field in GC Surge or the import template.

Device Access Credentials (automatic configuration only)

For the four brands that support automatic configuration — Hikvision, Dahua, AXIS, and NX Witness (including Hanwha and Spike Box) — GC Surge connects directly to the camera to push the alarm-forwarding settings. Have the following credentials ready for each camera before you start the onboarding flow:

Credential	Description
Device IP / Hostname	IP address or hostname used to access the camera’s web interface. Must be reachable from the internet for Public IP connections, or from the local network for Private/VPN connections.
HTTP/S Port	The port GC Surge uses to connect to the camera. Factory defaults: Hikvision 80 (HTTP) / 443 (HTTPS), Dahua 80/443, Axis 80/443. Check the camera’s web interface URL if the default has been changed.
Username	The administrator-level account username on the device. Common factory defaults: Hikvision admin, Dahua admin, Axis root. Check your device documentation if the default was changed during installation.
Password	The administrator account password on the device. GC Surge stores this encrypted and never displays it in plain text after the camera is verified. If the password is later rotated on the device it must be updated in GC Surge as well.

For unsupported brands or cameras behind a firewall without a public IP, manual SMTP or FTP configuration is used instead — device credentials are not required for that path. See Adding Devices & Automatic Configuration for the full connection setup procedure.

Network Requirements

GC Surge uses outbound-only communication. No port forwarding, DDNS, static IP, or dedicated network configuration is required at your site.

Cameras must have outbound access on port 587 (SMTP via TLS) or the configured FTP port.
DNS must resolve: smtp.zeptomail.eu and the GC Surge cloud ingest endpoint.
No firewall rules blocking outbound TCP on port 587.

Supported Camera Brands

The following camera brands are supported. All use SMTP via ZeptoMail (smtp.zeptomail.eu, port 587, TLS) as the standard forwarding path. For four of them — Hikvision, Dahua, AXIS, and NX Witness — GC Surge configures this automatically during onboarding when the camera is reachable on a public IP.

Hikvision
Dahua
AXIS
NX Witness / SpykeBox / Hanwha

Hanwha and Spike Box cameras run on the NX Witness platform — select NxWitness as the brand when adding them.

Cameras from brands not on this list can still be connected using manual SMTP or FTP configuration.

Trial Limitations

The free trial runs for 7 days. During this period the following limits apply:

Camera limit: Maximum 10 cameras per trial account.
NOVA99x: AI filtering is always active. It applies automatically to all cameras from the moment they are connected — no configuration or enabling is required.
Credit card: Not required at sign-up. You will be prompted to add one a few hours after your first login. A valid credit card must be on file to continue the trial. Credit card information cannot be added after the trial expires.
Performance email: A summary is sent every 2 days during the trial, covering overall tenant alarm activity and each operator’s individual performance.