Strategically Expanding Security’s Role In The Enterprise

Organizations are looking to emerging technologies to enhance security and communications

Verint 2014/2015 Review and Forecast:

The overall economy was solid in 2014, with large regions and industries continuing to grow and emerging markets revealing even greater opportunity. We are seeing emerging signs of strength in industries like Higher Education that are expanding their security horizons, or taking note of global events. Additionally, security organizations continue to evolve and play a key role in the organization. The security executive position is expanding from the monitoring and investigation of alarms to more strategic areas including risk mitigation and business continuity. This transition has resulted in far greater consideration for PSIM solutions, such as Verint SMC, than in previous years.

2014 was a banner year for Verint in the security and surveillance market. We released our Verint Situation Management Center (SMC) platform, which unifies a wide range of sensors and systems into a centralized, user-friendly environment. Multiple systems can be integrated with SMC, including communications, access control, panic alarms, intrusion detection, fire, building management systems, IP cameras, video analytics and various external databases.

SMC is critical in today’s market because more customers are looking to merge multiple security, life safety and business optimization systems into one platform. Too often, accessing the information from these various platforms is clumsy and labor-intensive, and it’s difficult to manage individual data streams, making collaboration nearly impossible. Situation management platforms offer users enhanced response time and effectiveness. Operators can view the location of fixed and mobile sensors and areas and targets of interest all through a single pane of glass. They can identify incidents before they impact business operation by leveraging Web-based data, security, traffic, government and commercial sensors and data sources. This allows operators to be more efficient and collaborative, while realising strong training and compliance.

The progression of security and its function within an organization will continue to evolve and grow because it is now an important discussion point within the C-suite. In the past, security was often looked at as simply a cost center to manage but now, as more departments touch the value of video surveillance, security has increased its importance across the entire organization.

This focus on delivering organizational value will further accelerate the transition from an emphasis on managing events to an expanded state of situational awareness. Risk mitigation will become an even greater responsibility of today’s security organization. With that, buyers are broadening their perspective on addressing today’s need by looking ahead to what will give them an advantage tomorrow, both in advancing the organization’s security strategy and in minimizing cost over time. This not only has to do with handling today’s security challenge, but tomorrow’s Big Data opportunity.

Leveraging the power of Big Data can help a variety of functions across a CEOs spectrum be more proactive in addressing business issues and identifying ways to reduce operating costs. From a selling perspective, this represents a fundamental shift in the conversation. We are no longer talking about specific product capabilities, features or functionalities in an IT or Security silo; the conversation is now about how IT can play an integral role providing solutions to solve large organizational challenges that are important to the entire C-suite of leaders. Changing the conversation from a product specific conversation to a solutions-based conversation won’t happen overnight but it will be integral to integrators’ and organizational stakeholders’ success in 2015 and beyond.

It is an exciting time to be in the security market. Organizations are looking to emerging technologies to enhance security and communications, which leads to more opportunity for security technology innovators. In addition, our customers are leveraging technologies in new ways. Educational institutions are gaining new levels of situational intelligence by enhancing real-time incident management, field communication and force management. The public is being asked to take on a role within Safe City initiatives by reporting suspicious activity with mobility reporting. Mobile applications are growing at a high rate because these devices can ‘act’ as roving visual and text data sensors to extend the overall reach of security intelligence. All of these trends and more point to a very robust future for the market. We as a company look forward to helping our customers achieve their goals in the coming year.

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