COVID-19 will not be entirely eliminated in 2021, but we hope to be nearer the new normal.
How can security companies prepare to take best advantage of the new opportunities?
collaboration which emerged between themseves, the supplier, and their customers, who were in more need of guidance and advice than ever before, and who showed a greater willingness to share best practices from other buildings. Future opportunities and advancement of the industry relies on us developing the collaboration where customers are more prepared to listen and are actively looking to our industry for solutions, rather than telling us what they want.
Aside from new opportunities, there is one constant: threat levels are still there – terrorism has not gone away, nor has the requirement to protect against anti-social behaviour, theft, fire, flood, etc. and indeed, our role in furthering customer service – and so COVID must not be a distraction from our primary purpose. Our focus will remain the same.
We’re likely to see contactless access control increasingly become the norm. At Hikvision we’ve had immediate success with our MinMoe terminals, which integrate face recognition access with mask detection and temperature screening functions, both of which can be configured to allow or deny access if triggered. And face recognition can be complemented with proximity readers for additional layers of security as required. These are ideal for busy city office buildings, where commuting staff are keen to rapid gain access, but don’t want to sacrifice security or defy public health guidelines to do so. In 2021, we’ll increasingly see video security and AI-based analytics software integrated with public signage systems to aid in circumstances where social distancing enforcement is necessary and live information is critical. We’ll see video security systems utilised in most environments: from retail to hospitals, from educational establishments – where the ability to swiftly pivot to distance learning will be increasingly important – to public transport, bank branches, and hotels.
2021 will hopefully be the year of opportunity for the security industry as a whole.
If there is one overriding trend we have identified following the start of the pandemic, it is a new-found respect for security officers and the vital role that they perform. The crisis has stuck them firmly in the limelight and security companies should continue to support and celebrate the positive contribution their officers make to ensure that they are not pushed back into the shadows again.
At this time, a major opportunity for the security industry is the potential to bring in new talent. At Axis, we are seeing a higher percentage of new recruits attending interviews, albeit ‘virtual’ ones. This may be because of the downturn in other sectors, such as hospitality, and it will be interesting if this is a trend that continues into the longer term. But what it does allow is for the industry to showcase itself as one with more career opportunities than an ‘outsider’ might imagine, and that has to be a positive development for our industry in the future.
Those security companies who are in the best position to strengthen their reputation will be those who build on the new-found
The next year is bound to be an interesting one for the security industry, particularly as its role expands to encompass functions which haven’t traditionally fallen under the security banner.
The effect of the pandemic has been to accelerate trends which, to an extent, were already on their way. It has helped to prove to a wider audience that security technology has evolved beyond simple alarms, video surveillance and access control, to provide integrated critical functions such as temperature screening and mask detection. Video security is becoming part of a wider suite of video-enabled functions, with security at its core but delivering valuable information and practical, actionable data.
© CI TY S ECURI TY MAGAZ INE – WINT ER 2020 www. c i t y s e cur i t yma ga z in e . com
And while the public health aspect of these solutions may drive their short-term uptake, the very fact that they are able to harness highly effective, well-designed software to enable these additional capabilities will also create an environment where further non- security functions are perceived as conveniently and non-controversially as smartphone apps, and indeed many will be accessible via phone and tablets. Once the benefits are clear, video security and access control will remain at the heart of the new systems, but their wider functions may be the way most users interact with them on a regular basis.
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David Mundell Managing Director Axis Security
Stephen Emmins Corporate Business Development Manager, Hikvision UK & Ireland
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