Security Technologies Top Trends for 2019
IHS Markit identified ubiquitous video as one of its top transformative technologies earlier in 2018. In public safety installations, we are observing this concept converge video surveillance and critical communications technologies as personnel embrace the benefits of ubiquitous video. Examples include the latest deep learning video analytics powering insights in safe city installations, a first responder live streaming body worn video to control rooms using the latest mobile broadband networks, or the closer integration and analysis of video data from multiple sources within software applications. In the wider video surveillance industry, demand for professional video surveillance cameras has been growing quickly and is forecast to continue in 2019. It is estimated that less than 10 million surveillance cameras were shipped globally in 2006. This grew to over 100 million in 2016. It is forecast that over 180 million will be shipped in 2019. At the same time, the steep erosion in the average price of cameras and other video surveillance equipment is starting to slow. As a result, IHS Markit is forecasting that the world market will grow at an annual rate of over 8% in 2019. Some regional markets, like India and Latin America will grow much faster. So, what will be the big stories in 2019? Future supply base changes, app stores and use of SaaS in emergency response are just some of the trends discussed in our ninth annual white paper on trends for the year ahead. The predictions on the following are to provide some guidance on opportunities across security technologies. Supply Base Changes in 2019 Supply to the professional video surveillance market has become more concentrated in recent years. The world’s three largest vendors accounted for 17% of market revenues in 2007 and 18% in 2012. In contrast, the top three accounted for 40% in 2017. Despite this, the supply base for professional video surveillance equipment remains much more fragmented than the supply base for many other markets. There are still hundreds of relatively small video surveillance equipment vendors, many of them with a market share much lower than 1%. There have been acquisitions in the past decade. Larger examples include Schneider Electric acquiring Pelco, Hanwha acquiring Samsung Techwin and Canon acquiring Axis Communications. In recent years, many smaller video surveillance software vendors have also been acquired. Examples include Canon acquiring Milestone Systems and Briefcam, OnSSI acquiring SeeTec, Panasonic acquiring Video Insight, and Tyco acquiring Exacq. Recent years have also seen some acquisitions combining video surveillance vendors and vendors of other security technologies. These have included Hikvision acquiring Pyronix and Avigilon being acquired by Motorola. There are likely to be further mergers and acquisitions in 2019 as vendors attempt to challenge the three largest vendors – Hikvision, Dahua, and Axis Communications. However, a spree of large scale mergers and acquisitions is not expected. vendors have themselves largely grown through organic means. The rate at which they have done this has been impressive. None of these companies were among even the ten largest vendors in 2005 and Hikvision and Dahua didn’t yet exist at the turn of the century. This shows just how quickly market shares can change and how quickly new entrants can grow. There have been several new entrants to the professional video surveillance market in recent years (e.g., Motorola, Eagle Eye Networks, Amazon, Huawei). There will be more new entrants in 2019. Perhaps some of them will be among the market leaders of the future. Cybersecurity is More than a Political Football Cyber security was one of the buzzwords of 2018. Something of a political football throughout the year, some western brands looked to cybersecurity to differentiate their offerings from products and solutions supplied by Chinese competitors. That said, there are real threats that need to be addressed in the cybersecurity market. As devices become increasingly connected and networked, every node on the network has the potential to provide access to a bad actor. Furthermore, the highly resourced and cyber-advanced vendors such as Microsoft and Adobe are getting much better at protecting their code from attack. The consequence is that cyber criminals are starting to look at the emerging IoT (Internet of Things) markets such as smart home and physical security. Combined with the relative inexperience of self-installers as well as security integrators (remember, analog cameras accounted for over 60% of new camera shipments only five years ago), this makes the video surveillance industry a high profile target. Interestingly, while building technology has been used as a point of entry to steal credit card details, in many cases the cyber-attack is focused on using connected devices to deliver DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. These attacks work by spamming chosen websites with requests from thousands, or millions of connected nodes on the internet, overriding the sites ability to respond and making it crash. These attacks may (but not always) inhibit the ability of the devices to perform their configured function, for example to record video surveillance footage. In response to all this activity the video surveillance market has started a process of education on cyber security. This has included training sessions and seminars, increased feature sets and best practice guidelines and the deployment of some encryption technologies. However, much like GDPR, there seems to be more talk about cyber security than real action or consequence. So, what will happen in 2019? IHS Markit predicts: There will be an increasing focus on where components and software are sourced from and which OEM partnerships are in place. Software auditing is required by end-users in many critical vertical markets which will make this more transparent. In the lower end of the market, ease of use will compete with cyber security. Ultimately, SMB’s are not as concerned with cyber threats and will prioritize ease of use and installation over security unless legislated to do something different. Which leads to regulations and the lack thereof. The industry will continue to lack real regulation and legislation, instead following the lead of the IT industry and large suppliers such as…