In last month’s column, I got out my crystal ball to predict what would be the big themes at ISC West in April. I wasn’t entirely wrong in my speculations that AI, cloud and integration would be heavily featured, but I missed one big topic of discussion: Tariffs. That concern, it turns out, was also on the minds of many of this year’s top 100 security dealers, ranked in the 2025 SDM 100 this month.

The way the SDM 100 is put together — beginning with a survey, then transporting that data into excel and examining it several different ways to put together all the tables and charts — I frequently don’t get to the “trends” part (the open ended comments) until the very last. This year, looking at the data, I mostly anticipated the comments would be fairly upbeat and positive. These companies are generally an optimistic bunch, and the aggregate numbers were nearly as strong as last year, and in some cases quite a bit stronger (they reported the highest total annual revenue in a decade).

I was wrong. Sure, there were a fair number who said their 2024 revenues were strong and that last year was better than 2023. But a preponderance described 2024 as just slightly better, average, or even worse than 2023. Why? Primarily the answers pointed to inflation, high interest rates and uncertainty in an election year.

Whether using AI for their own internal metrics, making strategic improvements in operations, or shifting their business focus to a different area — larger commercial, cloud or video monitoring, for example — these top security dealers found ways to thrive and grow in spite of the downward pressures.

And yet, there were plenty of bright spots. Those same technologies I referred to at ISC West were the ones identified as drivers of business in 2024, particularly video and video monitoring, AI and analytics. But more than that, whether using AI for their own internal metrics, making strategic improvements in operations, or shifting their business focus to a different area — larger commercial, cloud or video monitoring, for example — many of these top security dealers described how they found ways to thrive and grow in spite of the downward pressures.

One of my favorite comments came from Prosegur Services Group Inc., who described the market for security systems sales and integrated systems projects in 2024 as “a mixed but largely resilient performance compared to 2023. While the demand for security solutions remained strong, economic factors such as interest rates and inflation influenced investment decisions across various sectors.”

So what about looking ahead at 2025 and those tariffs? These companies were all writing their comments in January, February and March, when tariffs were a big topic in the news, and that continued in April at ISC West. But while that threat may have tamped down their usual enthusiasm for the future in the comment section, their actual responses to the question on whether 2025 revenues will be up, stay the same or go down, reflected a much more positive outlook, with 86 percent predicting they will be up, versus 78 percent last year.

Perhaps they are looking at it the way Safe and Sound Security, put it: “We don’t focus much on the macro economy or politics to forecast. All we can do is focus inward and control what we can control.”

In other words, they may be concerned about tariffs and other outside pressures, but they don’t plan to let it stop them from having a strong 2025. They are resilient.