Johan Paulsson, pictured, CTO at Axis Communications, offers six technology trends affecting the security sector in 2022.
Universally connected across hybrid environments: To the end user of technology – from a consumer using their mobile phone to security personnel managing video surveillance – the technology architecture being used to deliver services has become invisible. Whether processing takes place on a device, local server or in a remote data centre doesn’t matter: everything is simply ‘connected’. Last year we talked about the world going ‘horizontal’, where the combination of cloud, on-premise server and edge technologies would be increasingly used together, each employed to its strengths, in so-called hybrid solutions. This hasn’t changed, but it’s very apparent that the question of architecture is unique to each customer, and needs to take account of both internal resources and policies, and of external factors such as local and international regulation. As a security solution vendor, it’s not up to us to define for the customer the environments and architecture they should use, but rather to equip them with the tools and flexibility to decide on the best solution for their unique situation. Given that ‘connected’ has become the default, we do believe that most surveillance solutions will ultimately be hybrid – indeed, many already are.
Cybersecurity scepticism: The billions of connections that now exist between devices, networks, and data centres have made the concept of securing a perimeter around any organisation almost completely obsolete. The walls that might have previously existed have become permeable, and a new approach to security has therefore emerged: zero trust networks. While a year ago we foresaw the rapid acceleration towards zero trust network architectures, we now believe it to be a default approach. The pandemic has played a role here too, as much more flexible work has seen more devices previously used within the organisation’s walls connected remotely over the public internet. When zero trust networks means that the security profile for each device and application connecting to a network is independently evaluated each time it connects, it has implications for the video surveillance sector. Signed firmware, regular software updates, secure boot, encrypted data/video and secure identity will become hygiene factors, moving from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’.
Authenticate everything: Tampering with video after it is captured, and increased sophistication in creating manipulated images, means that we may see the authenticity of video surveillance footage being more regularly questioned. It is therefore going to be imperative that video surveillance can be undeniably genuine. Our approach is to add a digital signature into the video stream at the point of capture – a hash in each video frame – supplying proof that the video was produced inside a specific camera and that it hasn’t been tampered with since. But this is an issue for the security industry as a whole. It is therefore imperative that the industry aligns behind initiatives to standardise on approaches to secure the authenticity of video footage captured by video surveillance cameras, ideally based on open source software.
Artificial intelligence (AI) accepted: Many would argue that the AI ‘genie’ is well and truly out of the bottle. Indeed, we’re all using and being exposed to valuable AI and deep learning-based services. Technology in itself shouldn’t be regulated, but that use cases of new technology should be. Legislation and regulation relating to the development and use of AI-based technologies and applications should be developed at a local, regional and international level. And it goes without saying that it should be adhered to by all employing AI. While we’re still positive about the potential for AI and deep learning in video surveillance, we expect to see an even greater focus on initiatives to ensure that AI is being implemented ethically and without bias. This will be even more important as AI becomes embedded, to enhance and optimize all aspects of video surveillance, from camera configuration to image quality to analytics.
Covid catalyst: the pandemic has been a catalyst in low/no touch technologies, many of which are now embedded, as is the use of intelligent video to ensure that social distancing and public health guidelines are met. In the tech sector, the pandemic resulted in supply chain issues that have caused many to consider how they create and source key components in their products. The ‘connected’ nature of everything has meant that the global shortage in semi-conductors has been a significant issue from consumer technology to automotive.
5G: a new technology only becomes a trend when we start to see valuable use cases appear in security and surveillance. Though still early days, this is starting to happen with 5G. While much of the hype around 5G has been focused on improvements in network performance for consumer applications, one of the more interesting areas is how private 5G networks are emerging as a more compelling use case for the technology. We do feel that private 5G networks show some genuine potential for video surveillance across large or multiple customer sites.
And sustainability
Sustainability can no longer be considered a trend. It needs to be embedded in everything we do: how we design and manufacture products, how we run our business, the performance of our suppliers – all aligned to reducing our environmental impact, and operating in an ethical and trustworthy way. Wherever a technology trend looks like presenting an opportunity, it needs to also be examined through the lens of whether it can be developed and brought to market in a sustainable way. From the power efficiency and materials used (and re-used) in a camera, to where and how it is manufactured and delivered, to the ethical implications of new technologies and business practices.
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