The first two years of this new decade haven’t exactly been smooth sailing — to put it mildly. January 2020 began with a very rosy outlook, both for the security industry and business in general, but quickly turned upside down and sideways with the emergence of COVID-19 in March. Last year, 2021 started out with a lot of hope that the emerging vaccines would by now have made the coronavirus an issue of the past.
Of course, as we all well know, that didn’t exactly happen as planned. Things were definitely better in 2021 but life as we knew it didn’t come back as we wished it would, and the virus continued to play a role in everyday life as well as the security industry. Yes, there were trade shows again, but they were smaller, less populous events. Many security industry organizations either returned to online activity as the delta variant ramped up this summer, or put increasingly stringent requirements on attending, from proof of vaccinations to mask wearing. But business continued to happen, projects put on hold in 2020 went forward, and the industry soldiered on, incorporating new information, technology advancements, and challenges.