Tech trends affecting the surveillance industry in 2022

Innovation has been the core drive of all organizational operations last year. In 2022, we will witness this ongoing pace of technology innovation going through an equal evolution in building trust in the use of technology across all industries, including the security and surveillance sector.

Peeking into the hybrid environment
Return to office will be a major industry development across all verticals. Most organizations are looking at a hybrid model of work, the demand for a robust surveillance system to ensure employee safety while maintaining perimeter security will reign supreme.

Additionally, as most enterprises adopt the culmination of various technologies solutions like cloud, on-premises server and edge technologies, the architecture of their technological infrastructure, internal resources and external forces like regulations must be considered. From a security solution vendor perspective, we must be able to help the organizations to equip them with tools and flexibility to opt the best solutions suited for their existing infrastructure.

Cybersecurity will be king
Zero-trust networks, very popular approach to security in 2021 will become the default approach in the next year. The pandemic has been a catalyst in the swift adoption of zero trust networks owing to remote working. Signed firmware, regular software updates, secure boot, encrypted data/video and secure identity will become hygiene factors in customer solutions, moving from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’.

Authentication is key
While a zero-trust approach to cybersecurity focuses on authentication of the credentials of connected devices and applications, the ability to establish the authenticity of video surveillance itself is fundamental to trust in its value. Thus, it is going to be crucial that video surveillance can be undeniably established as genuine, and this can be achieved if the industry aligns with the initiatives and standardized on approaches to secure the authenticity of video footages based on open-source software and initiatives.

Utilization of responsible AI
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) ‘genie’ is well and truly out of the bottle with its seamless integration in our daily lives.

However, 2022 will witness how governments and organizations action the regulations for the responsible and ethical usage of the technology. Legislation and regulation relating to the development and use of AI-based technologies and applications should be developed at a local, regional and international level. Greater focus on initiatives will amplify this move to ensure that AI is being implemented ethically and without bias.

From the surveillance industry perspective, we will see the deployment of AI to enhance and optimize all aspects of video performance, from camera configuration to image quality to analytics.

Propellor of business innovation: Covid-19
The long-term impact of the pandemic is being manifested in multiple ways and has been a catalyst in touch free technological solutions many of which are now embedded permanently to ensure social distancing norms.

Additionally, the pandemic also caused a disruption in supply chain resulting in organizations ponder on essential components for their products, for instance, the global shortage of semiconductor chips has led to many organizations dive into designing their own system-on-chips (SoC). Thus, we anticipate more organizations engaging into designing their own Socs for specific applications.

Reign of 5G
While 5G came into the spotlight for its improvements in network performance for consumer applications, one of the more interesting areas is how private 5G networks are emerging as a more compelling use case for the technology.

5G has tremendous potential for the video surveillance solutions and could bring benefits from a cybersecurity perspective. With customers opting for private 5G networks, video surveillance systems will need to integrate seamlessly.

-- Sudhindra Holla, Director, Axis Communications, India and SAARC.