SIA announces the 2025 Security Megatrends

SILVER SPRING, Md.—The Security Industry Association (SIA) has identified and forecasted the 2025 Security Megatrends, which form the basis of SIA’s signature annual Security Megatrends report defining the top 10 factors influencing both short- and long-term change in the global security industry.

SIA’s 2025 Security Megatrends were selected based on fall 2024 survey data and focus group input received from hundreds of top security industry business leaders, association leadership, key volunteers and speakers for the 2024 Securing New Ground (SNG) conference, which took place Oct. 8-9 in New York City.

Each year, SIA produces the Security Megatrends report, which is made available to download for free. These Security Megatrends are the top forces at play in security, shaping executives’ business decisions and expected to have far-reaching impacts on businesses across the industry. These trends play an instrumental role in the insights and discussions at SNG, which brings together the leading entrepreneurs, luminaries, CEOs and investors in the security industry for top-quality information sharing, networking and business analysis.

The 2025 Megatrends report revealed that there is no trend larger or more impactful to the security industry than the evolution of the channel. Artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, technology upheaval, razor-thin margins, new competitors, direct-to-customer sales and delivery models and changing end-user requirements are converging to create the most challenging wave of change the channel has ever seen, felt primarily in the systems integration channel.

In SIA’s survey of members as part of the research for the 2025 Security Megatrends report, nearly 70% of respondents said their channel buyers are changing from the traditional security integrator, and security practitioner experts stressed a desire for integrators to be fully embedded on their teams in order for them to better understand practitioners’ needs and wants.

“The future isn’t always predictable, but it’s always exciting,” said Scott Dunn, chair of the SIA Board of Directors and senior director of business development at Axis Communications. “Integrators are the second largest core of our membership, and the amount of upheaval facing today’s integrators is profound. Artificial intelligence has burst upon our industry in recent years and holds great promise for our industry’s future. We have watched as operational technology converges with information technology and simultaneously with all aspects of security – physical and cyber. These profound changes call upon us to adapt and to realign our industry to the needs of the modern business world.”

The 2025 Security Megatrends are:

1. Evolution of the Channel
2. AI: Intelligent Automation of Security
3. Correcting the Systemic Undervaluation of Security
4. Visual Intelligence, not Video Surveillance
5. IT-OT Security Convergence
6. Platform Aggregation
7. Democratization of Identity and Mobile Credentials
8. Growth of Advanced Detection Technologies
9. Shift of Influence from Hardware to Software
10.  SaaS, HaaS, DaaS and a Managed Services Future

Key stats highlighted in the report include:

• 52% of surveyed SIA members said the future impact of AI on the security industry is greatly or somewhat underappreciated
• 81% of security industry manufacturers and solution providers say predictive data analytics are a meaningful or very meaningful component of their existing or soon-to-be-released products, software or solutions
• 91% of security solutions developers characterized their firms’ research and development investments as being fully, heavily or somewhat focused on AI – an increase from the 74% reported in 2023

In addition to defining the latest Security Megatrends, the 2025 forecast report shares perspectives on how these trends can affect security practitioners, integrators and chief security officers, examines key foundational trends for business leaders to manage as they operate within the security industry, features a collection of premier executive takeaways and includes numerous challenges and disruptors, as well as predictions for how trends will play out over the next year.

View and/​​​or download the official 2025 Security Megatrends report here.