PSI July 2019

www.psimagazine.co.uk
EDITORIAL
On the face of it
IFSEC was its usual busy mix of new
technologies, information and launches in
2019, but this year the clear trend was
adding analytics to surveillance with facial
recognition a common theme in the hall
Last month in this
column I commented
on the court case in
Cardiff in which a member
of the public is in dispute
with the South Wales
Police because they
allegedly captured his face
twice during an operation
to spot known lawbreakers.
He described this as a
fundamental invasion of his
privacy (see Panel later in
this edition to find out what
the experts think will
happen as a result). One
month later at the UK
security industry’s biggest
event, IFSEC International at ExCeL in London, facial recognition
was again at the fore as it was quite clearly the trend of the show
- which is good news.
The rise of analytics to where we are today is great for the
security installer. It means that surveillance systems are no more
installed purely for security purposes and it is no longer a job
paid for from a single budget with business intelligence and
marketing departments also being able to learn from the camera
collected data.
What is more exciting is that analytics are finally, definitely
here for good. We all know that companies try to get
technologies to market occasionally before they are 100% ready
because they want to either be first or need to be seen to be
riding along on the same buzzwords as everyone else. We’ve
seen it in the past with biometrics, external PIRs, integration and
more recently AI, when these subjects have been the next big
thing but in reality weren’t even ready to shine. Take AI for
example, this has been promoted for a number of years but not
with any manufacturers really having any ‘genuine’ AI tech to
show us. Analytics was in the same boat not so long back, but
now it is here, and here for good.
What this leaning towards software rather than hardware does
mean however is that we will for the next few years at least be
dealing with companies that are new to the security industry
(there were plenty of them at IFSEC 2019) and while the
technology may be very accurate (see above photo) we must
keep in mind that earlier mentioned court case concerning the
use of such innovations in public spaces. Transparency is now
key for the success of camera-led analytics installations.
Andy Clutton
EDITOR
The PSI Editor uses facial
recognition at IFSEC to find out his
celebrity lookalike - not bad!
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