Moving Into 2020: Video and IoT Trends

             As 2019 comes to a close and we begin to look forward to the next decade, we can now reflect on the year and the trends that have begun to influence both video surveillance and the physical security industries. December tends to be the start of a lull in business, including for the end user. Many businesses can be reluctant to make new purchases in security, or of any kind at the close of the year, and so those in the security industry also feel this slowdown. Still, this time offers us the chance to look forward and prepare for the coming year and beyond.
Here we will look into the security trends we expect in the near future.
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Cybersecurity for IoT
            IoT device security will continue to be a major focus, as it has been throughout 2019. Threat actors will continue to target IoT devices at the enterprise level in order to attack business infrastructure. In fact, more than 30 percent of denial of service attacks are targeting enterprise IoT devices already. Because these threats continue to evolve, the IoT and physical security industries must make an effort to keep up with cybersecurity trends and take measures to implement defenses against these threats. Still, many integrators continue to ignore this aspect of the field simply out of a lack of knowledge and a failure to properly gauge the severity of the threat.
             One of the best solutions here are automated tools, which are more advanced than ever. These tools can seamlessly integrate IoT hardening without  requiring a significant level of cybersecurity knowledge. These tools can give a complete asset inventory, secure those assets, and then insure compliance through ongoing monitoring. Automated tools also offer reports to the end user which can be helpful in filling in security gaps and determining where weaknesses and potential breaches in infrastructure are at. It is critical for the modern integrator to adopt such hardening tools to implement security from the beginning and throughout the life cycle of a system.
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Device Monitoring
               With IP cameras and other IoT security devices continuing to proliferate and expected to grow to billions of connected devices with IPv6, the demand for services that can assure and track physical security assets will grow alongside them. These device monitoring services track physical assets, monitor the performance of physical security and help with life-cycle management. Real-time management can be achieved through software platforms offering remote connections. These platforms help security integrators to assure system compliance, increase system up-time and performance, all while lowering the overall cost of maintenance. Such services also offer the benefit of RMR to the integrator through remote monitoring service contracts.
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The Cloud
                      Much has been said about cloud computing, and it is perhaps one of the most important pieces of the modern internet, allowing off-site data storage and processing using the resources of cloud service companies rather than requiring traditional on-site server setups. Ease of use, reduction in cost, and the simple fact that cloud computing has been critical for the last several years all lead to the end-user wanting these services.
                      Decision makers want to move hardware off premises and are looking for cloud-based solutions to video, access control, device management and monitoring. This demand will increase with time as the cost of entry goes down and cloud computing becomes the gold standard for IoT security platforms. Access control software will be hosted in the cloud, with the data from IP cameras and other security infrastructure fed into it, processed, and stored.
                     There is the issue of upstream bandwidth limitations for some larger commercial security and surveillance deployments. But with 5G coming in the early 2020s, and storage becoming cheaper every year, this is something that will likely be solved in time. In the very near future however, expect some video storage for larger facilities to remain on-site along hybrid solutions involving the use of the cloud for analytics and event video archiving.
                      Another advantage of the cloud is that it streamlines software updates for applications and firmware. Failure to manually manage such updates has historically been a problem in maintaining a hardened network. The cloud allows both these updates as well as new features to be deployed rapidly and securely, all while reducing the costs for integrators.
                        These are all security themes we can expect to continue to grow into the coming years, and the opportunity to remotely service security systems through improved wireless and cloud infrastructure will be leading the way. We can expect the key security changes of the last 5 years to be predictors, ultimately leading us to an age of extremely fast and hardened wireless security that is fully scalable and as cost efficient for both the end-user and integrator as possible.
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