Crystal Ball Time

January is the month of new resolutions … looking forward to the year ahead … making plans and strategies for a successful 2022. This is also the time of year to look into our crystal ball here at Security Systems News to see what our readers have determined are the top trends and challenges for the year.

Looking at our News Poll results, along with the Security Industry Association’s (SIA’s) Megatrends’ report, similar themes start to play out for the year. For example, looking at what overall areas companies are most focused on for 2022, 70 percent of readers said, “workforce development/company culture,” with 24 percent saying, “securing and leveraging data/IT” and the remaining 6 percent saying, “diversity and inclusion.”

Looking at top trends for 2022, “cloud-based services” was tops with 46 percent, followed closely by AI at 42 percent and cybersecurity at 12 percent. As Eagle Eye Networks CEO Dean Drako told SSN for our Cloud Source Book, the development of artificial intelligence will be driven by the presence and evolution of cloud systems. “We are going to see amazing stuff with artificial intelligence,” said Drako, mentioning license plate detection and gun detection as two immediate examples. “AI is going to get industry-specific, looking for solutions for police, education, airports, retail …. And different kinds of retail are going to get different kinds of solutions.”

Not surprisingly, SSN readers feel that supply chain issues (47 percent) and hiring new employees (41 percent) are the top two challenges for the year, with “doing business during COVID-era” taking the remaining 12 percent.

As one SSN reader noted, there will be “more wireless lockset providers and awareness for more doors gaining momentum. Labor force shortage is accommodative to these solutions.”

While supply chain issues linger, one reader noted that the key has been “moving up our company-quality quotient by utilizing new security scenarios through proper applications of capable new intelligence products and systems,” with the overall goal of “increasing sales volume and developing system integration scenarios with high-level clients.”

While there are certainly challenges for the year ahead, the security industry as a whole is certainly ready to get back to some semblance of normalcy this year.