Trends & Industry Issues

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Let’s all get on board and help raise the bar for ethical behavior in the industry — and call out those companies who disregard it.

Securitron, an ASSA ABLOY group brand, launched EcoPower power supply. EcoPower reduces locks’ power supply standby power consumption to only 8.5mW, a 99 percent decrease compared with current switching power supplies. According to Securitron, it is GreenCircle Certified to dramatically lower total door power consumption by up to 99 percent, reducing it from 20W or more to 0.3W when used with a low-power lock.

“Look out honey, ‘cause I’m using technology.” — “Search and Destroy,” Iggy and the Stooges, 1973

Dispatch from Buffalo, N.Y.

 I travel extensively around the lower 48 and Canada performing training classes for our industry. As a result, I have taken hundreds of cab rides in the past seven years.

The security industry looks to the SDM 100 — a group of 100 of the largest security companies ranked by their recurring monthly revenue — as a wellspring of industry trends and operational best practices. So, which manufacturers and distributors are behind the SDM 100, supporting them with the products, solutions and services that have helped make them successful?

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.