WITH SecTech Roadshow under our belts it’s well worth considering pre-Security 2017 trends as we start to think about which products and technologies are most likely to rattle the cage at this year’s big exhibition at Darling Harbour in Sydney late July.
Given what we saw at SecTech, access control is becoming the electronic security industry’s golden child, with lovely new product coming from all directions and the established players releasing excellent new solutions and upgrades in their own right. From the point of view of installers and integrators, the key with access control is to balance maximum performance with ease of installation and competitive price. The best systems offer access control, intrusion detection, automation and CCTV integration, with local and remote mobile management.
Alarm systems were another area of interest. What we saw at SecTech tended towards wireless and tended towards cloud. There’s a bias here, because manufacturers and distributors bring their newest stuff on the road but it certainly feels as if the cloud business model is growing.
CCTV cameras – they are better than they have ever been, not just in terms of general performance but overall specification. You can get a beautiful bullet camera with an integrated housing, IP66/67, IK10, integrated IR, motorised zoom and re-focus for a seriously affordable price. There are form factors for everything but try to get quality sensors. Some of the best optioned cameras seem to be making do with sensors that are not quite up to snuff – they tend to blur rapid movement even in the late afternoon.
IVA – there was a lot of interest in IVA solutions at SecTech. This technology is getting better all the time so if you have an operational demand, make sure you present it to suppliers at Security 2017. It’s not just about basic line-crossing any more so you need to make sure you deliver IVA software the best video data streams to chew on. When it comes to IVA, we also saw some face recognition authentication at the roadshow. This is an area where we expect to see more development over the next 5 years. There are challenges with face recognition but there are plenty of advantages, too.
Something else that pulled crowds at SecTech was body worn cameras. The interest wasn’t just coming from law enforcement but from end users, and integrators as well. Given the evidence suggests BWC significantly reduces complaints against police and security teams, perhaps this interest is not surprising. Want to reduce the pain of investigation and keep your officers and witnesses out of court wherever possible? BWC will do that for you. It’s a technology whose time really has come.
Management software. There’s much more of it and it’s increasingly evolved. Management software is also layered. There’s something for everyone – enterprise, local, from the access control side, from the surveillance side. Some solutions are better than others but 2017 is a great year to get out and compare the latest and greatest. The buzzword of the moment surrounding management solutions is situational awareness – depending on the application, the ability of a system to deliver status updates in real time is key.
Entwined with the development of smarter management systems is the realisation that the technology now exists to allow security and risk managers to proactively drive their security solutions to achieve outcomes in an economical way. This applies to smart city applications as much as to transport hubs that are remotely managing collections and deliveries.
Mixed in with all this was strong interest in the cyber security aspects of our increasingly networked solutions. Integrators are concerned enough about network security to arrive early to talk about it – this conversation needs to become a dialogue.
But the biggest thing that came out of SecTech Roadshow was the level of interest shown by visitors. There’s a growing intensity around electronic security – not as a grudge purchase but as a suite of connected systems that enhance safety, manage security, inform and escalate response, facilitate investigations and save money. What we saw at SecTech Roadshow was maturity and it was very pleasing to see. ♦
By John Adams
