4K - Round table discussions

The new school year is a good time to reflect on the role of security in protecting our schools. From video to access control to some newer technologies, our Expert Panel Roundtable found plenty to talk about when we asked this week’s question: How does security technology make our schools safer?

One impact of Chinese companies entering the physical security market has been an erosion in product pricing, creating what has been called the "race to the bottom". However, political forces and cybersecurity concerns have presented new challenges for Chinese companies. Adding cybersecurity increases costs, and the addition of more functionality to edge devices is another trend that has impacted product pricing. We asked this week's Expert Panel Roundtable: Has price erosion ended (or slowed do...

The year ahead holds endless promise for the physical security industry, and much of that future will be determined by which technologies the industry embraces. The menu of possibilities is long – from artificial intelligence to the Internet of Things to the cloud and much more – and each technology trend has the potential to transform the market in its own way. We tapped into the collective expertise of our Expert Panel Roundtable to answer this question: What technology trend will...

Industry standards make it possible for systems and technologies to connect and work together. Standards enable today’s integrated systems. But does adherence to standards stifle innovation? Does the necessity to interface using an industry-wide standard slow down the implementation of newer (and possibly not standards-compliant) capabilities? Or do standards eliminate extraneous variables, empower more integration and encourage greater innovation? We asked this week’s Expert Panel R...

They call it “critical” for a reason. The so-called “critical infrastructure” is composed of the basic services that citizens have come to depend on, and which are necessary to support society and ensure national stability. The term includes high-visibility segments such as airports, refineries, transportation, wastewater, nuclear reactors, electric utilities, pipelines, and more. Because these functions are so critical, the stakes of providing security are higher than fo...

Products are the building blocks of systems and solutions. How those products are combined, and where the integration happens, is a variable in the physical security market. Before the advent of open systems, a single manufacturer typically combined his own products, using proprietary connections, into end-to-end solutions for customers. Open systems undermined that paradigm to some degree and made it possible for customers to pick and choose products from multiple manufacturers to be integrated...

Higher pixel count is better. It’s a basic tenet of the video surveillance market, or at least it is the implication as manufacturers continue to tout their latest products offering ever-higher pixel counts. But the reality is more nuanced, as our Expert Panel Roundtable panelists explain this week. Pixel count shouldn’t be seen as an end unto itself, but rather as a factor in determining what camera is applicable to which application. Pixel count is just one factor of several to con...

The security market in the United States has been in a collective state of exhilaration since ISC West. The (possibly) unprecedented success of the big trade show has left us all feeling optimistic about the year ahead. Members of our Expert Panel Roundtable are joining the chorus of compliments for the show as they answer this week’s question: How successful was ISC West 2016? Did it meet your expectations?

The connected workplace, increase in “bring you own device” environments and even the rise in telecommuting have served to blur the lines between an employee’s private life and his employment. The idea of an executive’s obsessive need to check his Blackberry while on vacation has crept into the popular culture and is now a familiar cliché that is as old as, well, Blackberries. The blurring of lines has also created a blurring of expectations. Now employees expect t...

We have all heard the sales pitch: Use of megapixel cameras lowers the camera count needed to provide adequate video coverage, thus making the overall system less expensive. Use of fewer cameras equates to less infrastructure, bandwidth and storage, according to the claims, and megapixel cameras provide enough detail that you don’t miss anything using fewer cameras. It’s a compelling pitch, but one that has sometimes been questioned in the market. To look beyond the marketing hype, w...