INDUSTRY FOCUS

Another Banner Year, More to Come

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• Dec 01, 2019

It would seem everyone has a crystal ball when it comes to forecasting the future. What I have discovered is that some crystal balls are a little more polished than others. I’m pleased to have several contributors who will give us all some incredible insight into 2020.

Brian Carle, Salient. Some of the fastest growing areas in the video surveillance world include AI-based video analytics and cloud-based access and recording. Carle, author of “Understanding Video Management Systems,” says that a trend to watch for is more VMS interfaces that will offer greater access to and control of analytics and access control systems.

Fredrik Nilsson, Axis Communications. The security industry is a highly dynamic ecosystem, and technology continues to evolve faster than ever before. A couple reasons why: new markets emerge and old markets mature. The achievement that video quality and usability reaching their limits is not true in the least.

Laura Fradette, ASSA ABLOY Opening Solutions. An important trend has been and will continue to be the use of analytics and intelligence to manage security. The future is already here, and as she points out, the high-tech capabilities once thought as futurist are now happening, such as ultra-wideband that will enable hands-free access to entry and exit points.

Tom Galvin, Razberi Technologies. There definitely are megatrends that are influencing video surveillance. Much has been written about cybersecurity and its impact on the industry, and many expect this trend to continue well into 2020. IoT is still a target for bad actors, especially in the business infrastructure. Automated tools are the answer, and these emerging tools can deploy best practices for IoT hardening.

Clayton Brown, ReconaSense. It is safe to say that data is becoming more digital, and systems are becoming more integrated. Security is becoming more predictive, which means people are getting smarter and more innovative. Coming trends will include zero-trust environments that will converge. This means that cybersecurity only confirms that the enemy is, most likely, within your organization.

Without a doubt, cities and buildings around the world will become more sophisticated, automated and coordinated through more digital transformation. IoT devices and sensors will become more integrated into security systems for buildings and high-traffic areas, which means human patterns can be more intelligently protected and understood. Things that you see happen “only in the movies” are happening today, and behavior prediction will become more widespread. Welcome to the future, today.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2019 issue of Security Today.