By William Glasson.
Providing rigorous protection for physical assets shouldn’t mean restricting yourself to products and platforms from just one supplier.
Is upping your investment in physical security on your FY2026 agenda? For many organisations in Australia and New Zealand, the answer is, unfortunately, ‘yes’.
Unauthorised access attempts and break and enters are becoming ever more commonplace in this country.
Forced to contend with a climate of rising risk, many organisations are looking to harden their defences by implementing more comprehensive surveillance technology – think digital camera networks, facial recognition systems, automatic licence plate recognition solutions and the like.
Locking out or locking in?
If you’re going down this route, it’s vital to ensure that, in locking unauthorised parties out, you don’t lock your business to a security ecosystem that may turn out to be expensive, inflexible, and lacking in capacity to evolve apace with your operations.
Historically, such closed, proprietary systems were very much the norm. Customers would typically be sold on the convenience of an all-in-one solution, without stopping to consider the potential downside of being tied to a single vendor for both their hardware and software.
There can undoubtedly be downsides. Some of the negatives of a single vendor arrangement include expensive upgrades, restrictive service and support contracts, and a lack of interoperability with technologies and products from alternative suppliers.
In a worst-case scenario, functioning hardware may be rendered inoperable if access to the software used to manage it is lost, because of a contract dispute or because the vendor has decided to discontinue support for what it deems to be legacy devices.
Enabling connectivity and compatibility
Restrictive architecture and lack of interoperability should be of particular concern for organisations seeking to harden their security posture across both the virtual and physical domains.
While physical security systems were a standalone affair in the analogue era, they’re anything but in today’s world.
The line between physical and cybersecurity is blurring fast, and complete convergence of the two is likely to occur within a couple of years.
With camera arrays and other physical security devices now intersecting with IT networks, interoperability and adaptability are no longer ‘nice to have’. Rather, they’re critical requirements for any organisation seeking comprehensive, cost-effective protection that will go the distance.
Bringing disparate systems together
Using middleware, custom connectors and manual workarounds to link incompatible devices and solutions can result in performance and reliability issues and elevated support costs.
Fortunately, there is an alternative to operating a high-maintenance patchwork of poorly connected security products and programs, one which allows you to bring together a bespoke collection of devices and systems, both new and old.
Taking a unified approach
It’s called unified security technology.
The term refers to an ecosystem of security products from multiple vendors that can be consolidated to operate as a single unit.
A unified security platform can be deployed to manage them centrally, enabling an organisation to create a cohesive environment where video, access control, intrusion detection and other systems share data and workflows.
This open architecture means businesses can adopt a mix-and-match approach to their physical security infrastructure.
They’re able to retain older systems until they reach the end of their useful life and gradually phase in new ones, such as those incorporating facial recognition and edge-based AI analytics, without disrupting to core operations.
It’s the antithesis of the old school lock-in model and a measured, cost-effective way forward for Australian organisations seeking to mitigate the real and rising risks they face.
Securing your organisation’s future
Business continuity and profitability are dependent on maintaining the security of premises, operations and people.
Harnessing the power of unified security technology allows you to invest in best-of-breed devices and systems from multiple vendors and manage them efficiently and cost-effectively, via a single platform.
If strengthening your defences without locking your business into a restrictive arrangement is a priority for your organisation this year, it’s a strategy that’s likely to serve you exceptionally well.
