The September/October 2020 Security Market Index (SMI), released by the Security Industry Association (SIA), shows that after May/June 2020’s low SMI in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the industry is returning to confidence, a trend that was seen also in the July/August SMI report.

The Security Market Index measures the current status and future expectations of security industry executives through a select survey of SIA members. The index’s goal is to provide a macro-view of confidence levels in the security industry every two months while closely examining nine specific business measures: Number of employees or hours worked; marketing spending; product production or service output; capital equipment spending; product inventories or service backlogs; R&D spending; new product or service introductions; product or service sales; and new orders or contracts.

This month, 29 percent of security professionals rated current business conditions as “excellent,” 35 percent said they were “good,” 24 percent said they were “average,” 12 percent rated them as “fair,” and no one said conditions were “poor.” In July, 6 percent of respondents said conditions were “excellent,” 44 percent said they were “good,” 22 percent said they were “average,” 6 percent said they were “fair,” and 22 percent said conditions were “poor.” In May, 13 percent said conditions were “excellent,” 31 percent said they were “good,” 18 percent said they were “average,” 19 percent said they were “fair,” and 19 percent considered conditions to be “poor.”

The SMI for September/October 2020 is 49, up from 32 in the July/August report and up from 30 in the May/June report. The last time the security industry's confidence was this high was in the March/April SMI, which recorded a confidence level of 50 before the full effect of the pandemic impacted the security industry. An index above 50 indicates that conditions within the industry are largely positive and that security industry professionals are predominantly confident in their business outlooks.

Special focuses of SIA’s September/October 2020 SMI include: Improvement in the video surveillance sector of the market, which is showing high confidence; Continued decline in confidence within the integration sector; and strong confidence within the access control solutions market, driven by new product introductions, with 100 percent of the access control industry leaders surveyed predicting the market will be "much better" or "a little better" in the near future.

Find the full report online.