Articles by Karyn Hodgson

Post-downturn, home builders that traditionally eschewed technology are waking up to a ‘new’ reality and embracing home control and automation in a big way.

Visitor management today tends to assimilate with a company’s policies and procedures. And that offers opportunities for security integrators to make it a front-and-center sale, rather than as an afterthought to an access control system.

When it comes to access control cards and credentials it is difficult to have a discussion about technology without considering some of the seemingly contradictory trends in the marketplace. For example, the largest installed base of cards is proximity — a 20-year-old technology with known security issues. Yet in an industry that often seems to move at a glacial pace, the credential space is filled with some of the hottest buzzwords inside and out of the security industry, including Near Field Communications (NFC), Bluetooth, biometrics and even wearables such as the Apple Watch.

What is big data and how does it benefit you? If you are like many security integrators the subject of big data may barely be on your radar yet. However, looking to the future of the industry, it seems inevitable that as more and more devices become both smarter and more connected (think Internet of Things), the desire to do more than just sit on all of that information will prompt users to demand more from their security system, their integrator — and, increasingly, their data that may go way beyond the scope of “security” today.

Opportunities for earning RMR through cloud-based abound right now, making it a perfect time to think about offering hosted or managed access control.

The card reader can and often should be a bigger part of the conversation between the security integrator and his customer.