Which new security technology is poised to have the greatest impact in 2014 and beyond?

At the end of the day, security cameras are only as good as the images they produce. Security attracts many types of users and administrators. Often their expectations are informed by what they see in the broader consumer AV market. As such, 4K is an increasingly hot topic and a potentially disruptive technology in 2014 and beyond. This is due to the advancements in resolution and video quality but also the management resources needed to support them.

4K can have an exponential effect on network bandwidth and storage requirements. As such, IT and security professionals should work with manufacturers to carefully select products that offer not only the best image quality, but the best compression algorithms. This will ensure 4K can deliver on its promise to provide image quality and clarity that better protects people and assets while adding value in a variety of applications and environments.

The next big thing will be analytics technology to accommodate an impending information overload. In our connected world, security departments are getting more information from more sources than ever before, and the situation is likely to get worse with more crowdsourcing, greater integration among multiple systems, etc. Operators are drowning (or soon will be), and we need more analytics to help them make sense of it all, and not just video analytics. More intelligent (and more affordable) systems are needed to compile and interpret the massive data stream, to transform it into accessible and useful information, even to anticipate threats before they occur. These capabilities exist, and they will be a “game changer” as they make their way into the industry mainstream.

CCTV is (pun alert) the focus of my consultancy work so thoughts gravitate towards many of the trends that IFSEC 2014 recently put in our hands. The marketers are claiming 4K video gives four times the resolution of 1080 HD. It doesn’t. It only doubles. Is that worth four times the demand on your storage and bandwidth? Low light and wide dynamic range cameras are getting impressive, but still don’t believe the wild claims, so always conduct realistic tests. Thermal imaging is now much cheaper. You’ll bolt it onto your iPhone soon (not a joke). I’m pleased that my ten years howling at the moon about designing and pre-visualizing CCTV using 3D CAD has a few others howling in harmony. But trumping all of these with its impact? Portable video. Drones have civil aviation restrictions, but body worn cameras will massively impact their users and subjects (that’s all of us).