Security management - Expert commentary

From my vantage point, it would appear that the acquisition of goods and services related to security controls and measures remains healthy at the end of 2015. Although the time associated with evaluations and overall procurement processes, I am told, has become a bit lengthier.   Mergers and acquisitions of both security industry providers and the merger of national and international companies are the biggest unexpected things to have an impact this year. Forbes reported that...

Overall, 2015 has yielded positive results across the professional security industry due to the global demand for enhanced and expanded security in response to greater risks and threats. Over the past year, Altronix has participated in the industry’s growth with new technology offerings and an expanded reseller channel. The need to effectively respond to system trouble and remotely manage devices has become increasingly important to maintain security around the clock. More large technolo...

How did the overall economy impact the security marketplace in 2015? In as much as security is more and more becoming a necessity, it would be difficult to gauge whether the economy had any direct effect other than at a budget level. With the introduction of 4K technology, video storage with longer retention time has become the need of the hour. Being a manufacturer of IP video storage solutions, BCDVideo has been able to work with security integrators and camera manufacturers from around the wo...

2015 has been a mixed year. There’s been aggressive competition in the security industry and difficult market conditions in some parts of Europe. The market has slowed down, but at the same time there is still a huge demand for new solutions coming into the market. As a manufacturer, we continue to see strong demand for innovative products. Overall, the industry has matured this year. The full HD market is established now, and more security professionals are now looking beyond that. 4K an...

We in the industry have talked about IT’s growing influence in security technology decision-making for a number of years. This year, we have seen the trend accelerate rapidly. Significant changes are occurring in data centre infrastructure technology, creating major disruption to the large enterprise server and storage providers. This is fundamentally changing the way the security industry thinks about IT. 2015 trend – emergence of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) One of the bi...

In the past year, ONVIF prepared the release of two new profiles, Profiles Q and A, which are currently in Release Candidate status, being fine-tuned by developers from member organisations. They are ONVIF’s fourth and fifth profiles, with Profile Q addressing easy set-up and advanced security features and Profile A encompassing daily tasks for access control. ONVIF also hit major milestones in 2015, reaching the 5,000-conformant product mark and maintaining a membership of more than 500 m...

The KISI system has been installed in hundreds of tech startups in New York City and is currently targeting other areas of the US Based in Brooklyn, New York., KISI Inc. is a relative newcomer to the access control industry, targeting tech companies and co-working spaces for it cloud-based system. With its first round of funding secured in March 2015, the company partnered with Cushman & Wakefield to roll out its mobile access control solution at the real estate firm&rsquo...

2015 was positive for the security industry. In spite of economic volatility in many regions, the industry grew robustly throughout the year. Although a few countries went into recession, it did not negatively impact key players. We knew cameras with multiple sensors would do well; however, the rate at which these devices increased in availability was somewhat unexpected. The Avigilon HD Multisensor brings increased value because it uses multiple independently adjustable sensors for wide covera...

While the access control market typically moves at a near glacial pace, 2015 brought quite a bit of news to the marketplace, including the rise in advanced biometrics, the development of more and more mobile applications for access control and important acquisitions that put smaller manufacturers on the map. For Vanderbilt, 2015 was a big year as we brought the Siemens Security Products business into the fold, building our global brand and awareness of our award-winning solutions that have been...

Hikvision USA enjoyed tremendous success in 2015, thanks in part to the continued growth of the security industry. As we see a broader variety of vertical markets showing an increasing need for video surveillance, security vendors must be versatile in their product offering. The products themselves must be highly scalable and must provide high performance at a competitive price. Hikvision has been able to accomplish all of these things with a product suite that includes high definition analogu...

The ESA Summit is offering registration for “Rising Leaders” to gain valuableleadership skills and business tactics Leadership Summit presented by the Electronic Security Association (ESA), Irving, Texas, has penned the slogan: “Link. Learn. Lead.” for its 2016 event. Scheduled for January 31 through February 3 at the Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino in Chandler, Arizona, the ESA Leadership Summit is a testament to a quickly changing security landscap...

The proportion of failed ATM attacks is more than 50%, but the collateraldamage is high and growing ATM security providers and products can take various countermeasures to mitigate attacks on ATMs. The key is to detect an attack in its preparation phase. Speaking at ATM Security 2015 in London, Claudio Ferioli, head of physical security at Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo, provided an overview of the current state of physical attacks on ATMs in Italy. As the largest bank in the...

IDIS was a new name in the security market in 2015, and we asked the company to comment on interesting trends in the market at year-end. Here is that discussion.    SourceSecurity.com: How did the economy affect the industry in 2015? Keith Drummond, Senior Director of Sales and Marketing, IDIS America: The surveillance market had been quite resilient as it relates to the overall economy over the 15 years I have been in the industry, and 2015 has been no different. It s...

Many of the most well-trafficked articles posted at SourceSecurity.com in 2015 were those that addressed timely and important issues in the security marketplace. In the world of digital publishing, it’s easy to know what content resonates with the market: Our readers tell us with their actions; i.e., where they click.   Let’s look back at the Top 10 articles we posted in 2015 that generated the most page views. They are listed in order here with the author’s...

Many security solutions available today have the problem of being insufficiently open, offering very limited flexibility. Integrating third-party products is practically impossible. Customers therefore very often have to make a long-term bet on just one vendor. Upgrading or expanding security systems is often complex, expensive and time-consuming. But the industry is changing. Initiatives like open standards and cooperation between suppliers are emerging to help companies react faster to changin...

For the second year in a row, Canon made the biggest M&A move in the security marketplace in 2015. How could Canon top the industry shockwaves it created in 2014 when the Japanese giant acquired VMS company Milestone Systems? That’s easy: They bought Axis Communications for $2.8 billion in 2015.   Although the Canon-Axis deal grabbed the most headlines and was easily the most shocking M&A announcement of 2015, it was certainly not the only big news on the mergers...

Overall, 2015 was an interesting year for the security industry and Panasonic. We’ve seen some exciting advancements in surveillance technology, including a strong uptick in body-worn cameras for law enforcement. The transition to IP cameras continues; but with economic ups and downs, we also saw customers hanging on to existing systems longer than expected, so providing support and helping them migrate at their own pace will continue to be a priority for us. From a global perspective, the...

The global economy presented some challenges to Tyco Security Products in several ways throughout 2015. Anyone in oil and gas or mining experienced an impact resulting from the market dynamics within those verticals. Also, the significant strength of the US dollar versus other currencies is impacting order value for companies with a global footprint. All in all, though, business remains strong and growing.   Measures to strengthen cybersecurity Looking ahead to 2016, cybersec...

AMAG Technology provides an overview on its regional development and the current market trends in these regions. The integrated security solution provider speaks about the consolidation of the video market and the growing necessity to develop security solutions that address the needs of their customers. The overall economy positively impacted the North American security market in 2015 as AMAG Technology has experienced unprecedented growth as an organisation. On the international side, there ha...

The siliconisation of surveillance cameras has had a great impact on the security industry, especially this year. The cost of complex megapixel cameras has decreased dramatically as this functionality is now available on chips. The camera industry has gone from innovating on the camera’s performance and functionality to acting more like the PC OEM business, and this siliconisation is driving industry commoditisation. Commoditisation is levelling the competitive landscape as customers are...

We close a historic year for the video surveillance industry: HD security cameras dominate the market for the first time, while overall camera sales are growing even stronger than ever, as security customers are accelerating replacements, finally able to get HD CCTV. As of 2016, “4K” replaces “HD” as our industry’s code word for highest-resolution video. Trade show demos of 4K cameras are as common now as HD camera demos were in 2008.    4K technica...

An increasing trend, and one that will become even more pressing in 2016, is an expanded focus on personnel. This includes the recruitment, selection, training, engagement and recognition of the individuals who are assigned to help create and maintain safer and more secure environments.   The tightening labour market has propelled this pressing need to the forefront. With fewer candidates for security officer openings – and openings in most industries – the competi...

SourceSecurity.com’s Expert Panel had a lot to say in 2015 on a variety of topics in our Roundtable discussions.   Not surprisingly, the discussion topics that have generated the most interest (in terms of how much visitor traffic they generated) are the same hot topics we hear about every day in the industry. Our very most-clicked-on Roundtable discussion in 2015 was about the impact of video on privacy rights. Other hot topics that made the Top-10 list of Roundtable d...

Throughout 2015 the security industry saw the appearance of numerous mobile credential offerings, signalling the “beginning of the end” of card-based identity, and strengthening of mobile offerings in general. Overall, the security industry enjoyed healthy growth throughout 2015, as reflected in the better-than-index performance of most publicly traded security company stocks.  Cloud companies, in particular, saw the market turning their way, as a number of security vendors ha...

Automated procedures reduce manual errors & help meet regulatory requirements End user demands are growing exponentially every day. Whether it is managing who has access to buildings or areas and when, recording events on video, managing incidents, meeting compliance requirements or demonstrating proof of compliance, the list goes on and on as to what end users must manage to keep their buildings, assets and people safe. Physical security equipment and an effective securi...

Prevention makes tailgating impossible or extremely difficult due to the full height of an entrance Findings from the 2014 Tailgating Survey by Boon Edam Inc., Lillington, North Carolina, found that more than 85 percent of the 250 integrator and end-user respondents were not tracking the number of tailgating incidents. In the access control industry, tailgating is when an unauthorised person follows an authorised personnel through a controlled entrance. More than 50 percent...

Soft targets are civilian-centric places suchas churches and retail centres, where securityis not as fortified The terror attack on Paris on Nov. 13 lasted just 23 minutes. The bombers and gunmen split up and attacked seven sites: the soccer stadium where it all began, four restaurants, a bar and a concert venue. All told, they killed 130 people and injured 368 in the time it takes for a coffee break. This situation has raised questions about the security management for conce...

Risk, in a security context, is the product of threat, vulnerability, and consequence Security as a discipline has been an important feature of society since cavemen started using the environment around them to protect themselves and their families.  As a discipline, security has developed exponentially and that trend is continuing; however, somewhere along the way key elements of physical security design have been forgotten. All too often solutions are deployed in a pre...

Hackers probably take more interest in your home computer and information about your identity stored there As the Internet of Things (IoT) grows, so does the hackable universe. Equipment designers need to start thinking about security in the first steps of manufacturing products, and companies and individuals need to start implementing secure coding practices to avoid hacking incidents. Last July, for instance, two security researchers hacked the computer in a Chrysler Jeep a...

A lower bitrate reduces bandwidth andstorage requirements High definition and megapixel cameras provide more detailed images with more useful information, but this can come at a cost. The volume of data being transported and stored rises significantly. The bandwidth demand that this places on the network and the increase in required storage capacity adds significantly to the total IP system costs. The best place to reduce these costs is at the source – in the camera &nda...