'20 under 40' 2014—Brett Springall

Brett Springall, 40
Managing director, Security Central, Statesville, N.C.

What inspired you to get into the security industry?
Almost 12 years ago I was looking for work, so I'm not sure that inspiration is the best word! I interviewed at Security Central and a couple of other places, and had a few offers, but this was the one I chose. The reason was that it's a locally owned, family owned company, and I always appreciated that. I always felt at home in a small business, and I saw a company that was a leader in its field, a company that had a really good culture. There's a sort of stability here, too; at that point it had been around about 40 years. The good enthusiastic team I met also made it feel like a good fit.

What can be done to boost the ranks of young people in the industry?
In my particular field, in a monitoring center, I don't see a lack of young people in the industry. In other areas, absolutely, and you see that at tradeshows. But, being a cottage industry, that's always going to be the case. But you can talk about things like outreach programs, such as businesses in their local communities working with community colleges and promoting what they do. It's about putting the message out there that this industry has a very strong future, and that it's a great industry for young people to move into.

Where, in terms of technology and trends, do you see the security industry going next?
We all know POTS is dying on us, so I see the industry moving forward with more alternative communication methods. The other huge trend is value-added services, cloud services in particular, as we're reaching out now to add new services to our portfolio, both for our monitoring and retail/proprietary side. The Internet of Things is enormous, and the industry is going to become very high tech. Monitoring stations are data centers with call centers attached. We're cloud providers now, and our facility is a centralized location to provide those services.