What app does the security market need most and why?

The security market would really benefit from an Incident Management reporting tool which allows Guarding, Health & Safety and Risk staff members to report any defined incident in real-time and then automatically feeds directly into an Integrated Security Management Platform. From there a bespoke pre-programmed and intelligent rules engine manages the cause and effect of notification escalations, with threat level schedules and informs the right people or teams that need to know, automatically and immediately. 

This app would make incident reporting simple and quick as well as ensuring that all the relevant parties are aware, without having to bother all the potential receivers or having to manually update selected teams/individuals. Its flexibility would also give manufacturers and installers the ability to precisely tailor products to customer needs.

There are different types of “apps” in the security industry, and it’s important to differentiate. One type is the smart phone apps that include anything from product selection tools to remote access to video monitoring or access control systems. Another type is "apps" that run within IP cameras, covering applications such as people counting, license plate recognition, cross line detection, and more.

Whether or not the apps are needed or important really varies based on the situation and the use case. For security professionals identifying apps, seek out options that are easy to use, are within your company’s budget (if not free), and provide value to end users and integrators. Given the sheer number of apps out there, ease of use and value-add should be the number one consideration.

If we expand our view away from security we realise that organisations use many types of digital media for different purposes. Users collect and store images, documents, and other files in disparate systems. This creates data management silos and potential work flow issues. When a security incident spans the organisation how does management or investigators access and collate the files they need? Software programs for authentication have long enabled users to access multiple systems across an organisation without requiring them to sign-on independently; ideally the process for accessing relevant data from different sources should be just as simple. Unifying access to digital security assets is critical to helping end users manage the exponential growth of file sizes and types being collected. With unified access, end users can effectively manage and track digital files from any source and make them readily available for internal or evidentiary purposes.