Q&A

Steve Hunt on the Physical Security Industry

Steve Hunt predicts a much-needed shift to end-user focus and open architectures for physical security manufacturers and integrators. (Part of the What Happens Next security predictions series.)

By Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor

One of the important changes we are witnessing is the use of software and software licenses. Software licenses are an age-old concept in IT. But in physical security, it's a brand new concept and some times a frightening concept. Physical security is in the business of selling and deploying boxes. Even companies with names like "Software House," a large physical security brand under Tyco, donâ¬"t sell software licenses. They sell boxes -- access control systems.

Young software companies are forcing a change. Why? Because they can't squeeze into the old-boys integrator network. So they doing what IT software companies have done for ages -- sell direct. Then they hand the project off to local integrators, and then sign that integrator up as a reseller. That is the organic model of channel development and that is what young software companies are doing. And they are IT guys with an IT development team and an executive team that builds software for the physical security industry.

The theme of this course of change we are witnessing is the realization that the stuff of security is data. The video images, the access control events, the door opening events, the intrusion events -- those are all being recorded digitally, on hard drives or on SANs [storage-area networks]. So, while might start out as analog -- it's recorded digitally and becomes data.

There is a dawning happening that the stuff of security actually is data. And what did we do the last time we were faced with million of bits of unstructured bits of data? We organized it with computers, software and networking. This is what we do with millions of bits of data. We use a standard, best-practice IT infrastructure. And that's the revolution.

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