2015 has seen the rise of more terrorist related tension in the Middle East, in Europe and now in the USA. Together with the understanding of having joined up security systems, it is driving up the need for increased situational awareness. Demand by Government agencies and major global cities for large-scale centralised operations to deal with major incidents is growing rapidly. According to Keith Bloodworth, India alone is planning significant unified projects in 80 cities, while Israel, Turkey and China all have ambitious plans for creation of Safe as well as Smart Cities. Information is a key factor in dealing with issues relating not just to terrorism, but also to natural disasters and day-to-day security. Public safety is high on most political agendas and across the Enterprise markets, physical and logical security is becoming a Board level priority.

As the security market continues to grow worldwide, traditional markets such as the US and Western Europe are steadily expanding their capabilities, while newer markets such as China, India and the Middle East are investing at a much faster pace. The new markets are mainly IP based integrated solutions, which has brought about many significant changes, not least of which is a shake-up of the VMS and CCTV camera markets. New product entrants from Asia, China in particular are undermining the traditional camera markets with quality products at lower prices than traditional suppliers.

Keith Bloodworth suggests that VMS’s are becoming more intelligent and video analytics are now becoming more feasible as clients begin looking for complete solutions rather than individual products. Complex integration of multiple systems, such as VMS and ACS with other sub-systems like perimeter protection, will demand rules based PSIM solutions to manage increasing volumes of disparate to provide better awareness and management of any situation; providing end users with one well-presented and managed Enterprise solution.

"CNL Software has had a great year, its fastest growth to date, mainly based on industry recognition for our two most valuable assets, our people and our products. With record order levels, the company is expanding fast in order to manage these levels of sales. Our view is this is not a “blip”, but a trend as we are also seeing the highest level of bids and tenders where PSIM is a named component of a mission critical or Enterprise security solution. So much so, we are ramping up our pre-sales capabilities in all regions order to support our channel partners," says Keith Bloodworth.

"With new offices in the UAE and the US, these regions have been the catalysts for our most significant growth since inception. Our Center of Excellence based in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi is the largest, most complete, full service team of any PSIM vendor in the region and is still growing rapidly to meet the rising demand for our software in the GCC region. CNL Software’s US office, based in Ashburn, Virginia has also been awarded several large wins in the North American market. This office is based in the Washington DC region and has partners for the homeland defense/state security markets as well as Fortune 100 end users who have moved or are moving to large scale, Enterprise wide, integrated solutions," he continues.

Looking forward into 2016, Bloodworth believes we are seeing greater investment in technology to overcome spending cuts in manpower, particularly in large scale homeland security, state, Government and Police security operations. He predicts that strategic partnerships will be a key driver as the public and private sector work ever closer to identify threats, report them and provide their security infrastructure to resolve them. Simply put, most local Governments do not have the financial resources to tackle problems alone so public/private initiatives will have to grow.

The CNL CEO suggests that certain specific areas of the security business will see growing popularity throughout 2016.  For example, we could start to see the gaps closing within Intelligence Security Management. With the continually increasing diversity of security threats across the globe, Bloodworth forecasts that 2016 will see the emergence of closer integration between all systems within the security disciplines that make up intelligence security management. The lack of deep end-to-end integration between the systems driving the Physical, Personnel, Communications, Information systems, Security Classification and Operations Security disciplines highlights the need to challenge the mantra of Situational Awareness and accelerate the demand for Situational Intelligence through integrations focused on empowering counterintelligence techniques in preventing situations from occurring or at least providing effective early warning signals.

He also believes that more IT and hybrid channel partners and vendors, and some on a global scale, will enter the market in 2016 and they will get their revenues from consulting, software sales and some PSIM implementation.  The use of 3D mapping, camera analytics, large scale federated systems for governments, defence, corporate security and mass transit applications, and safe cities will also be fast growing sectors for 2016.

In terms of the Internet of Things, Bloodworth, claims that most people are still not sure how it will affect the security industry but that it is something that is certainly on its way. CNL Software has joined the IoT Security Foundation and expects that they and others, will be attaching leading SIEM products to ensure the device layers are not providing an attack surface. "When the new hybrid channels begin working with large-scale corporates and start processing data held in the Scada systems, security and facilities will change from a facilities operation to a business intelligence must have." explains Keith Bloodworth.

In summary 2015 has seen and recognised a marked change in the threats we are faced with. This is leading to increased focus on intelligence, and will only grow in the coming year, as organisations, both public and private proactively piece together information to understand and eliminate threats before they become incidents.  Keith Bloodworth predicts that having the right tools to do this is going to be a market driver in the security market for at least the next 12 months.