Last updated on January 18th, 2022 at 10:55 am
The pandemic has forced businesses to look at their physical security strategy and evaluate the changes they must make to keep up with the changing demands of modern security.
Hybrid work models and increased health and safety needs have made the need for newer and more efficient physical security technologies apparent.
Learn more about the future of physical security and how you can equip your business with the necessary tools to adapt to these changes.
Top Emerging Technologies To Futureproof Your Physical Security
An Ontic commissioned study found that over 40% of business leaders were concerned about keeping their employees safe in the wake of the pandemic.
A large part of protecting the health and safety of your employees lies in protecting your physical spaces and equipping your business with the latest physical security technologies.
Here are the latest emerging physical security technologies and how they could benefit your business.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is being used to make physical security systems more effective and create a more user-friendly experience for security staff. This is because AI can complement and augment human capabilities, helping security teams make better and faster decisions when it comes to their physical security.
Artificial intelligence works by analyzing data from sensors in your security system and creating alerts for inconsistencies. Suggestions and prompts will then be given to your security team so that they can take swift action.
Smart Video
You can also use artificial intelligence to help your security team monitor video feed without having to spend hours poring over the footage. You can gather video feeds from multiple locations in your facility, and you could have visibility of your entire building, but this means nothing if you can’t analyze this content.
Smart video handles the observation of your video feed for you and can detect suspicious activity immediately to alert your security staff. This increases the likelihood of your team preventing an incident from occurring and enhances how rapidly you can identify security threats and resolve them before an incident occurs.
Mobile Supported Security
Mobile-supported access control has become an increasingly popular emerging technology since the pandemic.
The potential spread of germs in public spaces kept people confined to their homes for months, illuminating the need to provide solutions that allow people to access workspaces and private buildings without touching physical surfaces.
Because access restriction is the foundation of physical security measures for an effective strategy, mobile credentials will prevent employees from sharing their credentials with one due to the personal nature of mobile phones. As a result, this will reduce the amount of incidents due to unauthorized access to buildings and keep contact bubbles secure, preventing the spread of germs. It also protects both digital and physical assets stored inside the building.
Mobile touchless access cards allow your occupants to enter the building without having to reach into their pockets for added convenience.
Touchless access can be granted using BlueTooth communication, which means that the readers can pick up a signal from occupants’ mobile devices to open doors from a distance without being placed directly in front of the reader.
Converging Security Elements
Since the pandemic began, cloud-based technologies are being used more frequently to allow remote operations. This means that digital and physical assets are becoming inherently linked, demanding that physical and digital security be combined.
You can converge cyber and physical security to enhance your physical protection by installing cybersecurity software to protect the cloud-based security technologies safeguarding your building. You need to ensure that the remote operation capabilities allowed by cloud-based technologies are only accessible to authorized users.
Health And Safety Technologies
Health and safety are additional security concerns posed by the pandemic and must be included in any security strategy to meet modern security demands. If you install an access system to improve the physical security of your building, this will allow you to integrate wellness verification software to provide health and safety protection measures.
Wellness verification software works by requiring authorized users to fill out a wellness survey about their symptoms before gaining access. This prevents users with symptoms of coronavirus from entering the building and provides peace of mind to employees. Health and safety technologies are necessary to adapt physical security to meet the demands posed by the pandemic.
Summary
The technologies that have emerged from COVID-19 can be used to future-proof your physical security by converging physical and digital security and providing health and safety measures. Digital and physical assets are becoming combined through the internet of things (IoT), meaning that we can no longer conceive of cyber and digital security as distinctly separate entities.
