Brent Boekestein, Openeye’s VP of Enterprise Accounts, and Ian Siemer, Openeye’s VP of Product Management and Marketing, have identified 7 of these emerging surveillance trends and industry insights and what they mean for the larger security world.

1. Going cloud to stay secure

Historically, there has been a perception that staying offline or limiting online access can make systems more secure. The reality of the situation is that in order to be protected, you need to be connected. While it may seem counterintuitive, being connected to the internet helps users more effectively adhere to IT and security best practices, with numerous benefits including the ability to, monitor the health of all your connected systems and respond to them; to audit and track user and system activity; to generate audit reports for all connected hardware and their firmware; to regularly push out patches for systems via automated updates to address vulnerabilities; and to monitor real-time threat detection.

Centralised user and permission management is another big benefit of being connected. Users aren’t allowed to use default passwords, and everyone must have their own unique account, significantly boosting the security of your system. Additionally, multi-factor authentication ensures these systems are secured.

Realistically, the ability to have a system totally disconnected and protected is nearly impossible. Being online allows you to password-protect shared video, gives you a better chain of custody, and it removes friction that can cause lapses in adherence to policy, making it easier and simpler for organisations to follow security best practices.

2. Focus on what you do best, let SaaS manage the rest

“What we’re starting to see is businesses getting rid of that heavy lift of managing their security infrastructure so they can devote more resources to improving their business operations,” says Brent Boekestein. “By opting for a VSaaS model, your chosen security vendor will deliver value to your organisation month after month by seeking new ways to improve and enhance your system, so you and your organisation can focus less on shipping NVRs and handling patches and more on what makes whatever your company’s "beer" is…taste insanely better.”

3. Buyers are more informed

Video surveillance is not a new technology. It isn’t uncommon to see buyers who have owned or used two, three, or more systems previously. Because of this prior experience with multiple systems, most buyers are in the position of knowing what they do or don’t want out of their video security. Today, organisations have more specific operational needs, ease of use requirements, and a greater desire for return on investment.

The race to add more and more capabilities to cameras and recorders is slowing. There are no longer these massive leaps in terms of hardware. The average megapixel specifications, channel count, and retention needs for users are well below the maximum capabilities of the hardware that’s on the market. What this means in practice is that consumers are making more informed decisions based on software capabilities.

“The focus now is on bringing more locations online and deriving more of that value sooner from their video surveillance,” says Siemer. “Businesses want to uncover new insights and drive better business outcomes with their systems, not just upgrade the hardware for upgrade’s sake.”

4. From surveillance to strategy

Hardware is plateauing. Now, software is redefining the value that video brings to an organisation, and in turn how security professionals are uncovering valuable new insights for their respective companies.

“Every one of us in the security industry is emerging from the ‘dark closet’ that we’ve been sequestered into by the rest of the organisation,” says Boekestein. “In essence, we’ve been told to go in there and just keep our people, places, and things safe. As video and the value it can deliver continue to evolve, so too do we have an opportunity as a whole industry to evolve as well. We’re set up now to deliver value through all this video data we have in our clutches to operations, safety and compliance, marketing, and sales teams. There’s a real opportunity to graduate from surveillance to a strategic business partner.”

Security professionals are no longer the last to find out when new stores are being opened or when a strategic business change is going to be made; instead, they can be the ones to help make those critical business decisions.

5. Integrated platforms

Integrated platforms have been around for a while, but it’s a solution worth highlighting because of the rapidly escalating interest and adoption. There’s been a notable increase in the desire for surveillance platforms to support divergent integrated solutions, aggregating their data points and having them delivered in a succinct and actionable format, with visual verification being the critical element.

The old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, is really true. All of the data a system provides you with is exponentially enhanced by visual verification and validation. “You can interpret this data faster. You can come to resolutions quicker. Our brains just process that contextual information more effectively visually,” says Siemer.

It’s incumbent on managed video providers to integrate with other data points, such as access, intrusion, point of sale, smart sensors, and video analytics, so that the event data can be married with video to create a single pane of glass experience for users. That’s one of the reasons there’s been such an increase in adoption, and the good news is that the industry is continuing to develop new standards and protocols that make it easier. Thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT), there are many constantly evolving standardised communication frameworks like JSON, XML, Web RTC, and webhooks. This allows a more efficient exchange of data, along with the openness in communication that’s making it easier to connect these divergent platforms.

6. Agentic answers, not analytics

As we know, every picture is worth a thousand words. At 10 frames a second, a single video camera produces 864 thousand “words” a day. That’s a ton of data.

The challenge right now is that users are in a state of analytics overload. There are all these systems producing insights as video is becoming a more evolved tool. So, how are innovators looking to help businesses not only have more data from analytics but actually get the most out of that data?

The answer, according to Boekestein and Siemer is an agentic future.

“These are Gen AI-powered agents, which we can think of as autonomous software helpers,” says Brent Boekestein. “They understand context, they act semi-autonomously, and they can pursue goals that you give them. Specifically for security, that means a more streamlined approach to summarisation of data, automation of repetitive workflows, prioritisation of alerts, and integration of data from various sources.”

People get into security to keep people, places, and assets safe and secure. With the upcoming agentic future, that’s becoming easier to do. AI can take care of repetitive, dull, and menial tasks, freeing up valuable time so you and your team can further elevate business security and operations.

7. Big data, big insights

According to the company, Open Eye Web Services has crossed the 1 million connected cameras mark, with nearly 2 million connected devices, they now lay claim to processing over 1 billion events a month.

The amount of data being collected is growing at an exponential rate as new systems come online, and also as existing systems are adopting new features. This is helping Openeye make more informed decisions about what to develop next to best support its users.

Openeye is seeing that businesses want to centralise their video and data to uncover new insights and make more data-driven decisions. These advances in generative AI and machine learning are giving organisations the capabilities to parse data in new ways, combine it, and generate new data points.

“In a way, all this new data we’re finding really gets at the heart of all the trends and insights we just discussed: video systems are producing more data. They’re being used in more novel and operational ways. That’s really driving the boom in data that’s building the next layer of value in the VSaaS market,” says Ian Siemer.