“40 under 40” Class of 2019 — Matt Jones, 36

Matt Jones has been at H. Stephen Jones and Associates, Inc. (HSJ), a design engineering and consulting firm in Jacksonville, Fla., since 2008. He and his older brother have helped their father, who founded the firm in 2000, grow the business to what it is today.

Jones' day-to-day responsibilities consist of leading the physical security design, engineering and consulting department.� “I am heavily involved with our physical security assessment team, and more hands-on than most in terms of testing, building, mocking up and field-testing physical security devices and systems,” he explained. “I am also heavily involved in marketing our business and work closely with my marketing manager, Ryan Lee, on business development in several of our key vertical markets (i.e., critical infrastructure, healthcare, DoD, aviation, corporate campus, higher education, laboratories, and criminal justice).”

Jones is a huge proponent of leveraging physical security technologies, such as AI, deep learning and intelligent predictive analytics, as “force multipliers in the application of physical security measures and programs,” he said. “I believe the demand we are putting on security officers today is unrealistic, has increased on nearly a daily basis, and is not sustainable at the unprecedented rate that asymmetric threats continue to morph. This is not to say technology will ever completely take the place of the hugely important human element in physical security, especially in terms of event response, but it is to say that technology must be used as a force multiplier to augment the human component.”

Jones said the three most promising new security technologies are LiDAR-based object classification and situational awareness applications, non-traditional predictive behavioral threat analysis sensors/software, and passive weapons detection systems.

“I believe they will change physical security based on how accurate these technologies can be when deployed properly,” he said.