How embracing AI can make your organisation’s physical security defences more effective in FY2027

By Lee Shelford, Sales Engineering Manager & Cloud Lead, Genetec

 

Is your organisation seeking to strengthen its physical security posture in the upcoming financial year? If you answered in the affirmative, you’re far from alone.

While Australia remains a relatively safe country, our threat landscape continues to evolve. Businesses and organisations are at increasing risk of intrusion, high-tech infiltration and incidents of public disturbance and disorder.

Protecting employees, customers and assets is an ongoing imperative but so is containing costs, particularly in today’s uncertain economic times. Employing large numbers of additional security personnel may not be a financially feasible proposition for many organisations.

Judicious deployment of physical and digital security tools and technologies can, however, deliver a cost-effective security uplift.

Unpacking the AI advantage

The pace of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making investment in these assets an increasingly compelling proposition.

There’s been no shortage of hype around this technology du jour and that can make it hard for business and security leaders to filter out market noise and home in on the true value it can generate.

Here in Australia and around the world, it’s providing a range of operational benefits to early adopters.

They include supporting daily security operations. During live monitoring, intelligent automation can help decrease the incidence of nuisance events. These are a long running bugbear for security teams who are often required to devote hours to investigating them each week, on the off chance they portend genuine incidents.

Obtaining a comprehensive view of large-scale incidents can also become a simpler proposition, if AI is used to bring together evidence from multiple systems and sites.

Being able to surface relevant information faster and ‘join the dots’ between occurrences and events allows organisations to manage their responses more effectively.

And during investigations, AI can be harnessed to help teams comb through large volumes of video footage and metadata, dramatically shortening the time and cost associated with locating relevant evidence. Investigations that once took days, are now reduced to hours.

Organisations can also garner insights that enable them to strengthen aspects of their security posture, thereby reducing the risk of similar incidents in the future.

Struggling to marry AI with old-school tools

Harnessing the power of AI in the physical security sphere isn’t always straightforward, particularly for organisations whose security ecosystems comprise an array of standalone and legacy solutions.

It works far better when an open architecture model is adopted; one which amalgamates video surveillance, access controls and intercom and intrusion detection systems via a unified security platform.

Having one in place enables organisations to maintain a bird’s-eye view of their physical and virtual assets and deploy AI-powered automation and analytics to drive operational efficiency and extract vital security intelligence.

Partnering with a security provider in the AI vanguard

If you’re thinking of investing in an upgrade that will enable your organisation to make better use of AI, it will pay to work with a best-of-breed security vendor that has a strong track record for staying ahead of the IT curve.

Ideally, they’ll have a substantial footprint in your sector and will be able to share insights and case studies that show how they’re helping customers derive measurable benefits from the AI capabilities that are integrated into their security products.

Look for a provider that offers strong AI guardrails and granular user controls, along with end-to-end encryption and secure data transfer protocols, and you’ll stand the best chance of enjoying the security boost AI can deliver. It is important for developers to prioritise privacy, data governance, transparency, safety and keeping humans in the loop to minimise bias and make decisions.

Using AI to safeguard your organisation’s future in FY2027

A robust security posture is a non-negotiable for Australian organisations that are committed to safeguarding employees and assets and maintaining a duty of care to the public. The strategic adoption of AI can aid in this endeavour; making it possible to enhance the effectiveness of the protective measures you put in place, without increasing your overheads. If deriving more value from your security ecosystem is a priority, it’s the ultimate enabling technology.