'20 under 40' 2014—Trey Alter III

Trey Alter III, 36
President and CEO, Dynamark Security, Hagerstown, Md.

What inspired you to get into the security industry?
In truth I was really born into the alarm business. The business was started in 1975, a few years before I was born, so I grew up in the business, doing everything there is to do inside a security company, from the warehouse, to central station operations, to installer and accounting. � As I grew up and became an adult and decided to choose a career, I consciously chose this business because I really love it and I find it very rewarding.

What can be done to boost the ranks of young people in the industry?
I think our industry's already attracting young people and that's a trend that's probably going to accelerate. Our industry has evolved into a technology business, and there seems to be a career path for young people from just about any discipline now, whether it's accounting, software, code writing or marketing. Some of the more successful companies I've seen in our business have begun to see the value of recruiting and hiring top quality candidates right out of college and right out of graduate school.

Where, in terms of technology and trends, do you see the security industry going next?
I think in a broad sense, security and life safety are always going to remain a core focus for a lot of businesses. But we also have to augment that to be relevant to the world changing around us. We're becoming a security, information and services business, and the technology we're installing is helping homes, businesses and governments essentially receive information, translate it and take some action with it. In the monitoring business, while we have all this great technology that allows people to interact with their phone and through the Internet, by and large the process of how we interact with the customer hasn't changed since its advent. We need to do more to allow the customer to interact with us through different mediums more conveniently.