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Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said, “Out of adversity comes opportunity.” The security industry, like many businesses in the U.S. and the world, has certainly seen some adversity this year. In the video monitoring part of the security industry, however, a situation that started as chaos quickly shifted to unique opportunities to help both existing and new customers.

In our industry, security is everything. We secure homes, offices, factories, government buildings and even aging parents. So why aren’t we securing networks?

As of March 2020, the PSA Network was in the final phases of finding my replacement as CEO. I had decided in 2019 that it was time to retire from my post with the organization. The board of directors understood, and we hired a c-level recruiting firm, Kingsley Gate, to find the next CEO of PSA.

In the past, intercoms were fairly simple: there would be a call button and perhaps a mechanism for remotely unlocking a door, and that was it.

Around the country in every major metropolitan market is an SDM 100 company that worked long and hard to get where it is today. These are the 100 largest U.S.-based security companies — as ranked by their recurring monthly revenue (RMR) — on the annual SDM 100 Report.

As the pandemic progresses, the difference between the pre- and post-COVID-19 world becomes more and more emphasized. Months into socially distancing, it’s increasingly hard to imagine how the world will operate once the virus has finished passing through.

Evaluating the state of any market is a tricky thing during a pandemic — things are changing daily; new technologies are being explored; the future is unknown; and it’s difficult to look back at the past clearly.

For at least the last couple of years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been one of the biggest trends in the security industry. Offering the ability to “learn” over time, AI provides the technology to anticipate and identify potential issues as they are unfolding.

This year’s SDM 100 report and rankings show excellent growth for the SDM 100 companies in 2019. The onset of the coronavirus pandemic was just starting to hit as the security industry’s top companies were filling out the 2020 SDM 100 applications; to many of this year’s companies, it is like being on a mountaintop without a clear view of the landscape. Read on to look at this year’s top security companies ranked by recurring monthly revenue, along with their thoughts and projections for what lies ahead.

Now more than ever, people are conscious of the surfaces they touch. When it comes to entering a door, any time you don’t have to touch a handle, it’s a relief. In the access control industry, the word “frictionless” has been a growing trend for a while; now it has even more benefit for end users.