In view of the characteristics of various types of distribution network equipment, heavy workload of daily security inspection and many potential safety hazards, moreover, the traditional manual inspection method is difficult to quickly identify a variety of security vulnerabilities of distribution network equipment, this paper proposes an identification method of security in patrol inspection for distribution network equipment based on four-rotor drone. The drone video image fast discrimination technology is applied to quickly inspect the security problems of distribution network equipment to ensure the safe and stable operation of the system. In view of the high-efficiency and low-cost security inspection requirements of distribution network equipment, the visual positioning algorithm of drone is designed from the principle of coordinate transformation, camera imaging model, vision based pose estimation principle and AprilTag pose estimation principle. The KCF tracking algorithm is used to track the target, and the motion model of the target established by Kalman filter is used to improve the traditional KCF algorithm, overcome the edge effect and improve the tracking reliability of the target. Finally, a practical case verifies the feasibility of the proposed method, which provides some reference for lean management of distribution network equipment.