NEW YORK – Many leaders of the most influential manufacturers, integrators, and distributors descended on New York City in October to discuss “the business of security” – the theme of the annual Securing New Ground Conference, presented by the Security Industry Association (SIA).
The program explored many of the most current and cutting-edge technological issues facing the industry, such as the digital transformation, the future of mobile credentials, and artificial intelligence's continuing and evolving impact. In addition, the event featured insights into the economic factors poised to influence the industry in the months and years to come.
The top news item coming out of the show came from Tom Cook, EVP of Sales and Operations for Hanwha Vision, who revealed that his company is going public. In April, Hanwha Aerospace spun off its video surveillance and semiconductors businesses and combined them into one unit: Hanwha Industrial Solutions. Cook said the spinoff became publicly traded on the Korea Stock Exchange in late September, and as of this writing, it was trading at around $33 per share.
“Going public gives us another opportunity to grow our company,” Cook said during a lively one-on-one debate panel with rival executive Fredrik Nilsson of Axis Communications.
With 18 roundtable and one-on-one interview sessions on the stage featuring more than 50 speakers, it was a lot of information. Here are a handful of the interesting tidbits that stirred debate:
Artificial Intelligence
Not a single panel, discussion, or interview seemed to avoid the AI topic in some way. Whether it was discussing the SIA Security Megatrends (three of which were AI-related in 2024), the video surveillance industry, and even M&A and economics.
“My first Securing New Ground was in 2003, and the main topic was AI. We called it video intelligence back then, but it was still the main topic,” Nilsson said. “If you look at the investments in security from all of [Axis’s] large customers…80% of their spend is on manual labor – monitoring, guarding, installation, and maintenance. In most other high-tech industries that spend is around 50%; therefore, AI is really the holy grail if we can make it work to capture that value with technology instead of manual labor.”
Another lively panel featured Pierre Racz, President and CEO of Genetec, who shared the stage with i-PRO Chairman and CEO Masato Nakao. Racz has long been an opponent of the AI concept, as he explains: “It's not that I object to the technology – we've been using deep learning networks since 2012, but I really object to the term artificial intelligence,” Racz said. “AI in my vocabulary, as I've said before, stands for absolute ignorance. Things that humans struggle with computers can do really well, like adding large columns of numbers without getting bored; but things that that humans do well, computers struggle with. So I don't like the term AI, but I do like IA, which is Intelligent Automation – where you put the human in the loop, who can provide the judgment and the creativity and let the computer do the heavy lifting. IA can be a useful tool that augments human capability.”
The Digital Transformation and Data Aggregation
Highlighted as one of the SIA Security Megatrends, the rapid digitization of technology and the momentum of IT/OT Convergence (read more on this topic from Tech Trends columnist Jon Polly) was highlighted by Tara Dunning, VP of Global Security for distributor Wesco.
“We all know about the proliferation of sensors and the sensorization of all things on our physical, IT, and OT converged networks…this isn't going to change,” she said. “In 2023, 16 billion IoT devices connected on networks worldwide, where our systems sit – whether it is surveillance, access control, or visual intelligence. In 2030, that is set to double to 32 billion. What does this mean for us? It increases complexity, and it increases risk. More and more critical systems are converging – it is all about the convergence of the subsystems and the platforms and all the data that they generate – and how we help the end-user bring all this together, and aggregate it in a usable fashion.”
The Value of Security
One of the more interesting points of the conference was raised by Brivo President and CEO Steve Van Till. He posited that monthly costs for security-related technologies and services like access control and video surveillance are significantly underpriced by our industry compared to enterprise software and other business services.
“Why do we think inside the industry that these things are too expensive? When I go outside the industry and talk to end-users, they think it is cheap,” Van Till said. “How much does our belief that it is expensive limit our ability to sell it to someone else?”
It sparked some heavy debate in the room, with many pointing out that security is a cost center vs. a value driver; however, that notion was countered by some who said that the layer of intelligence and data generation being leveraged by end-customers is being built on the very backbone of security technology.
Check out this Related Article from SNG
Guard Forces on the Front Lines
Steve Jones, CEO of Allied Universal, was one of many interesting one-on-one, on-stage interviews at SNG. One highlight of his discussion was the rise in crimes that go unreported or unresponded to by local law enforcement; thus, putting security officers often on the front lines of response.
“If you would have asked me 5 or 10, years ago to predict the future of the guarding industry, I would have said that as we are using more technology, the security guarding industry will continue to slow down,” Jones admitted. “I have a different view today. It truly is the combination of both technology and manpower – because somebody has to respond.
“Our security officers are on the front lines now more than they've ever been,” he added. “The challenge we have is employees being put in situations they were never trained for – active shootings, officers being attacked at bank branches, or big smash-and-grabs that are highly organized and coordinated. Local law enforcement just is not able to manage all of it anymore – there's just not enough of them.”
That was just a small sampling of the many thought-provoking conversations held at the event. If you are interested in attending next year’s Securing New Ground, be sure to bookmark https://sng.securityindustry.org for future announcements.
