The security industry can expect a paradigm shift in the upcoming years: the move from on-premises security solutions to hosted methods for access control and video surveillance. In terms of revenue streams, redundancy, and user experience, this shift is immensely positive. It also comes with its own implications and questions.

Benefits of Hosted Access Control & Video

Hosted access control and hosted video have the upper hand over their on-premises counterparts when it comes to cost, redundancy and staffing. Whether you’re a small customer or a large enterprise, these are considerations that always play a role in choosing the appropriate security solutions.

SaaS solutions cut costs on physical equipment and space requirements while offering redundancy and quicker, more reliable updates. They also require fewer staff members, since security staff can access data and video from multiple checkpoints and even various offices, all from their current locations. These solutions are flexible, customizable, and integrate smoothly with other aspects of security systems and the operational workflows.

Key Implications

Of course, transitioning to more cloud-based models for security comes with its own set of implications like the work-at-home trend of the last 18 months. The transition will mitigate many cybersecurity and data security risks by leveraging the expertise of some of the largest data center operations in the world. This will allow businesses to focus current security staff on operational issues versus software maintenance.

These developments, alongside the need for enhanced authentication methods to provide more secured end-to-end solutions, will help bridge physical and logical security. The adoption of mobile credentials in the world of a decentralized workforce facilitates the move to digital identity management in organizations. This switch not only opens opportunities for integrations with cloud-based security solutions, but also offers a new layer of security. For most people, smartphones are one of the most treasured, trusted, and tightly guarded items in our possession.

Mobile credentials are likely to offer tighter security simply because people don’t give up their phones and don’t take losing them lightly. If you use your smartphone for financial transactions, you certainly would not object to using it for granting access.

Where is the Market Headed?

Right now, hosted solutions for access control and video surveillance only account for a small percentage of the overall market.

Five years ago, most enterprises had very little experience with Software as a Service (SaaS). Today it would be difficult to find any company in the Fortune 500 not using cloud storage or SaaS in their enterprise such as AWS or Microsoft 365. This everyday use begs the question: If you’re comfortable putting your emails into the cloud, which generally contain vital information for any given business, then why wouldn’t you consider using the cloud to also host access control and video surveillance data?

For smaller businesses, why wouldn’t you use systems like Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google, or other large cloud companies and get the redundancy and most current security and software updates that used to be available only to the companies who could invest hundreds of thousands of dollars? These solutions are high-quality and reliable, at competitive price points.

Now, most of the major security manufacturers have come out with a cloud or SaaS product or are working on one. We’re moving in the direction where it will make sense for everyone to consider a transition. Anyone who’s looking to implement a new system and anyone who’s growing or upgrading should consider ACaaS or VSaaS. Only time will tell what the future holds but it is highly unlikely that hosted solutions will not make an impact in the physical security market. Just look at the impact to CRM, email, and business operational software in other industries today. //