Specifically Speaking: Marty McClanahan on the importance of integration and the dangers of AI

RALEIGH, N.C.—Protus3 COO Marty McClanahan sees “a large push” for customers seeking integrated security systems.

“No longer should the access control system not seamlessly communicate to the video surveillance platform, and both should operate in conjunction with one another,” McClanahan said.

Protus3 is a firm that specializes in everything from security consulting, security system design, corporate investigations, and site risk assessments to the creation and/or enhancement of company security standards and programs.

As part of Security Systems News’ monthly column Specifically Speaking, the following is an exclusive Q&A with McClanahan:

SSN: What vertical markets does the company specialize in? Any interesting projects that you can mention?

MCCLANAHAN: Protus3 focuses on all public and private sector areas, but we best support medium to large corporations looking to assess and/or enhance their security programs. Our staff has a vast amount of operation, design, assessment and implementation experience.

If you follow us on LinkedIn, you will notice that we strive to remain educated, inviting many different security manufacturers to visit and share their latest information to help us understand their future roadmaps. We have always been vendor-agnostic, while keeping updated on the latest security technology news and trends.

For interesting projects, where can I start? We generally have NDAs in place to ensure that our clients and their information remains confidential and secure. However, I can say that we have been able to provide security services for items tens of millions of years old all the way to pre-market prototypes which have yet to hit the public eye.

SSN: Can you talk about what new or emerging technologies you are seeing or specifying today?

MCCLANAHAN: The 2024 buzzword of the year is definitely “AI.” With those two letters, many company marketing teams have focused on how to spin off this cliché term, with everything from new cameras to security drones using this magical “AI” to help. Readers beware – many times exaggerations are being made or stretched imaginations can occur with this hot marketing term.

SSN: What is your view on the industry moving forward?

MCCLANAHAN: I believe the traditional approach to user authentication and credentials are about to go through an evolution. There are some already proven cutting-edge technology and devices hitting the market now which can replace the high cost of traditional access badges, and which do not require yearly subscriptions like mobile credentials.

Secondly, I believe video surveillance storage in the cloud is making some decent advances and beginning to challenge past infrastructure alternatives and bandwidth limitations using on-prem buffering devices. As these limitations become more mitigated, clients will likely need to validate the security of the cloud or hybrid infrastructure models before fully deciding which model to select.