We got it in just under the wire. As Hurricane Helene barreled towards Florida the last week of September, the security industry gathered for the annual ASIS International General Security Exchange (GSX) in Orlando. With more than 200 education sessions and around 500 exhibitors (as reported by ASIS), the show featured booths from both manufacturers and several large integrators, along with a number of networking events both during and after the show. 

Sometimes literally running from booth to booth, it can be easy to focus just on the next appointment, the next meeting or press conference and, as the saying goes, miss the forest for the trees. This was especially challenging this year, as I rushed around trying to fit two and a half days of events into barely two, and then to just a day and a half after my airline “suggested” I might want to grab an earlier flight out on Wednesday before the weather got worse.

But as my truncated visit to the show unfolded I began to notice some common threads. Often security systems manufacturers focus on the newest product or widget. But this time around, there was an increased focus on what users can do with those products —  and specifically the data they produce.

Genetec featured new products around efficiency, including its new Operations Center work management solution that is designed to improve productivity, communication and collaboration of data across different parts of an organization, both security and non-security. 

Twice, I heard the acronym PIAM (physical identity and access management) touted, including at AMAG Technologies, where the topic revolved around end user pain points the solution can help solve. 

The other company, Meron, was a brand new — as in less than 24 hours old — company exhibiting at GSX and bringing to market a new PIAM product that will be primarily sold through the security integration channel.

“We decided to introduce it at GSX because we had matured the product to the point where it was ready,” said Sharad Shekhar, principal. Shekar also owns an integration company and had been trying to find a PIAM solution that would work for his customers for the past two years when he was approached by engineers who thought they had something that might work. 

“When these guys came to me, I said, ‘Show me what problems you are solving?’ Shekar said. “I then said come back to me when you solve it. When they did I said, ‘This is great, this is what needs to happen.’ Besides the user interface, which is very user-friendly, it is infinitely scalable, Shekar explained. “And it is using some of the technologies we didn’t even have five years ago. … We can make it more predictive than responsive. … In this scenario the work process becomes more friendly if you don’t even have to ask the question. It tells you continuously what is wrong with your system.”

AMAG Technologies focused on end user pain points their solutions can help solve.  

Everon, celebrating completing its first year after separating from ADT and rebranding from the ADT Commercial identity, also spoke about the importance of predictive rather than reactive response. 

CEO Dan Bresingham stressed the importance of marrying different data sources to give it back to the customer in a meaningful way, which the company was rolling out in a new offering for their customers. “Most of our customers, their departments are pretty thin. So we are always looking at how we can help them identify things quicker,” he said. 

Mike Compton, Everon’s chief technology officer, added, “I think customers want you to tell them what is going on. They don’t want to have to go figure out everything for themselves. So I think a big trend is historically in our industry we have had very passive and reactive technology that has been offered. … What customers are saying now is, ‘Tell me what is going on. Our teams are getting smaller. We have less capacity and we need the capability to be more intelligent and help us derive decisions and get us to the right place. … [We] understand all the different features you have, but how does this make my life easier and how can you help me get more efficient?’ It is really driving that decision making and helping get them going in the right direction. The way we do that is through understanding the data that is in the environment. 

“We have not as an industry done a really good job of integrating things outside of our industry and we are starting to do more of that now and also leveraging more of what we have. I think partnering those things together, you can provide a much better solution for the customer, and we actually can drive intelligence back to them. That is what they are asking for.”

Chris Brown of Immix also spoke about the proactive. “One of the things we are really focused on is Auto Patrol. We have always had guard tours through cameras. In order to make it more efficient we are now partnering with AI companies who offer AI inside the patrol. You can go into a menu per camera and select what you want the camera to detect for, say, a back door propped open or a car parked in a fire lane, etc., anything AI could look at and see clearly yes or no. We are seeing companies run hundreds if not thousands of tours a day through our platform. So if we can digitally take even 25 percent of those and automate those and alleviate all that labor time, that’s the one thing in today’s market that nobody can find — people. 

“We think that can help change the industry a little bit, because Immix has always been a platform that is reactive. We get an event, we respond to it. … I really wanted to move the company into a proactive position where we were both reactive and proactive and so this allows us to shift the 20-year position of the company from event-driven to proactive.”

But Brown took the data play even farther, looking ahead at trends of data use in the security industry. 

“For years, the industry has been evolving from reactive to proactive. Now I think we have the ability through this data to get preventative, and that is really where the next shift is. The ability to look at the data coming out of these sites and say, I have a particular street or city and I am seeing activity, either a real threat or a lot of traffic or false alarms, during certain hours. That tells me I have an environmental problem. Maybe there is a bus stop there that empties out three or four buses at 6 p.m. I can now do things with that information. I can start to approach that and prepare for it and be waiting when it happens. I think that is the proactive approach we are going to get to. Law enforcement can’t respond as quickly as they used to. They are understaffed and challenged. We have an obligation as an industry to step up and help them do their job in a more efficient and effective way, to send them good data and information and make it so they don’t have to go. If we can get preventative we become real partners, not just a customer. I don’t think we have been a good customer in the past. We send them to everything. We have the ability with this data to understand the terrain maybe as well as they do and get in front of those risks so they don’t have to and become a better partner to the communities we serve. We couldn’t do that before. We couldn’t analyze the data in a way that it could tell a story that was true. Now we have the ability to do that through multiple resources.”

Genetec featured new products around efficiency, including its new Operations Center work management solution that is designed to improve productivity, communication and collaboration of data across different parts of an organization, both security and non-security. 

These are just a few of what I am sure were many examples throughout the show of the deeper benefits of security beyond simply the latest and greatest products. 

As the event began to wind down and talk turned to the coming storm and wishing everyone a safe trip home, we were just over a day away from a weather event that would turn tragic in multiple states, including the ones people were returning home to, with no idea that they would become the focus of the story, such as Western North Carolina. And as I watched that event unfold later in the week, complete with both security camera and drone footage of unimaginable flooding, my thoughts turned to all the communities, people and businesses that are suffering. I was reminded of some of those conversations about preventative data and I wondered how far we will be able to take that going forward — not just for security, but potentially for life safety and disaster response.

GSX 2025 is scheduled to be hosted in New Orleans, Sept. 29-Oct. 1.