Recent events have made access control solutions increasingly popular as school campuses – both K-12 and higher education – race to find a solution that will keep their students, educators, faculty and staff safe. While terrorism is a top concern for most Americans, organisations worldwide have been hit with the realisation that added security is something nobody can scrimp on.

In the last year Vanderbilt has seen a growing trend toward advanced biometrics, the development of more mobile applications for access control and important acquisitions that are putting smaller companies on the map. For Vanderbilt, the acquisition of Siemens Security Products business, as well as building their global brand and awareness, were top-of-mind in operations throughout the year as was the company's continued focus on providing more than simply access control solutions to the marketplace.

In 2016, the security marketplace Vanderbilt predicts that we will see numerous new developments and shifting access control priorities, such as increased focus on hardening perimeters within schools and the reprioritisation of classroom and school-wide security measures to meet their demands. The company believes it will continue to see growing popularity in the need for integration capabilities between human resource departments, event management systems and data between access control devices to help streamline installations and ease new system transitions.  They also predict the continuation of growing demand in mobile applications for security officials, along with the increased ability to grant access through mobile devices on various platforms.

Looking ahead to 2016, Vanderbilt is looking at ways to expand on customer service and training initiatives, as well as bringing in a number of new products that will give their partners an expanded access control portfolio to offer to their customers.