2025 Security Industry Predictions: Judy Jones, NAPCO Security Technologies
NAPCO vice president of marketing is the latest security industry expert to try her hand at predicting what’s ahead in 2025.
Photo courtesy of NAPCO Security Technologies
We’re continuing our 2025 Security Industry Predictions series with Judy Jones, vice president of marketing at NAPCO Security Technologies. Here’s what she thinks is coming in the year ahead:
Security Sales & Integration: Without getting into any specific vendors or branded solutions, what technology category or solution area do you see as 2025’s ripest, most profitable growth opportunity for security dealers, installers and integrators? Which ones do you think will truly transform the practice of security integration in the coming years?
Judy Jones: Cloud-based services in all aspects of security. The opportunity for launching new subscription-based business has created more technological convergence between security categories including access control, locking, security and video and attracted new manufacturers and large tech players to the security marketplace.
Driven by advancements in computing, internet, network availability and bandwidth, coding and artificial intelligence (AI) coding, today’s technology is evolving faster in a year than in decades past. New opportunities in integrated hardware, software, communications, biometrics and wireless solutions have skyrocketed in access control, security, communications and locking services.
Some solutions are pure cloud, some are a hybrid of on prem and cloud. Due to their affordability and perpetually updated nature, oftentimes even customers are requiring cloud-based solutions.
SSI: On the business and operations side, which single factor (e.g., interest rates, talent-related issues, geopolitical stressors) poses the biggest challenge for the security industry right now? How can business owners mitigate their downside risk?
Jones: The risk with all this is new avenues for cybersecurity and data privacy risks. And those who benefit from earning new lucrative service RMR need to show due diligence in likewise protecting their accounts.
For example, while it’s essential that the security industry’s reliance on wiring and retiring POTs landlines is literally coming to an end and digital communications and cloud-based hosted data are now widely accepted solutions, they bring to bear newfound dealer concern, or liability exposure.
The one thing POTs lines and hard-wiring had going for them were they were dedicated, contained channels to safely pass security data through.
Today, the security of security data is a hidden, largely unknown variable and the liability for protecting the consumers’ private data, videos and life safety alarm response communications may fall on the security provider/dealer/integrator taking better precautions and being able to prove it, i.e., showing due diligence.
SSI: What’s liable to catch some security dealers, installers and integrators off guard in the coming year?
Jones: We’ve all seen large-scale lawsuits when security companies have inadvertently hired bad actors as employees and private customer data/video was misrouted/misused. More recently, we’ve even seen large security companies, hospitals and municipalities themselves fall prey to being held hostage by ransomware, hackers and cyberattacks.
When other manufacturers’ critical security data and communications are left unchecked and (unlike Napco) using common uncertified web service platforms, such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft’s, i.e., intermingling critical security with the much larger, mass volumes of everyday consumer and vendor transactions, especially overloaded at peak periods, there is an inherent risk.
In fact, it’s termed by those very same cloud providers as “shared responsibility.” Shared responsibility means they’ll take some responsibility and liability for firewalls, global infrastructure and architecture, but they expect their users to implement security best practices on their end.
In this case, those are deemed to be the users’ responsibility for securing who has passwords, user rights, permissions and account credentials to the hosted database. It remains up to the security company to protect that data on their cloud.
Without an up-to-the-minute IT department resource on staff, are dealers themselves prepared to take on that responsibility and liability, for example, when it’s the life safety security for thousands of people in a commercial building that has a fire? Dealers/integrators need to double-check their security solutions, especially life safety commercial fire solutions are UL End-to-End Listed.
(Napco communication solutions are all UL 864 Listed end-to-end.)
Beyond insisting on equipment’s critical, well-known security industry compliances, like UL listings and NFPA Life Safety Codes, cybersecurity too should be another factor examined and sought after. In addition to the ongoing rise in cybersecurity risks, its prevalence and infiltration success has been aided by AI, including deep fakes, misinformation and easier creation of more sophisticated malware.
Many large multinational companies, most with large legal departments, require manufacturers to have proof of this kind of security, i.e., checking to see that the prospective company/partner is “SOC 2 Compliant” (as is NAPCO by the way), many smaller dealers do not.
SOC 2 is a security framework that specifies how organizations should protect customer data from unauthorized access, security incidents, and other vulnerabilities. It’s a framework applicable to all technology service or SaaS companies that store customer data in the cloud to ensure that organizational controls and practices effectively safeguard the privacy and security of customer and client data.
SOC 2 is very important with respect to providing protection for large financial institutions and ensuring optimum protection of their proprietary information. Cyberattacks, and likely new cybersecurity regulations and standards, are all certainly going to increase substantially with time.
It’s important security pros remain up-to-date and informed or partner with responsible manufacturers who work to protect them and their business for the long term.
SSI: What’s getting better about the security industry these days? What seems to be getting worse and worse?
Jones: We believe the pervasive factor that seems to get worse and worse is the lack of skilled labor in the industry. It’s always been an issue in security and it deteriorated further with the COVID crisis and then unemployment rates reaching historic lows around 4% throughout the last few years. This demands the adoption of new methods, new segregated workforces and new business models.
Smarter solutions that are easier to install require less training, tools and technique. More goof-proof, possibly AI-assisted, mass technology, for example, allows dealers/integrators to reserve their more senior/advanced staff and technicians for bigger commercial and custom jobs, which are likewise more lucrative.
Increasingly, for more high-volume systems, such as in homes, MDUs or SMBs, dealers are using “ship-to/self-setup” systems and/or providing video tutorials for setup and follow-up videos, sent (emailed) thereafter for continued feature-set use, i.e, to prevent attrition on unused features/services later in the life of the account.
With today’s savvy consumer, learning things on video and/or setting up smart devices, especially using spoken prompts, is commonplace, following suit with the success and popularity of Alexa and video doorbells, etc.
SSI: What’s the single most pressing issue that professionals in the security industry should look to tackle right now?
Jones: Course correction for the times or revision of business models. Change is always uncomfortable, but nonetheless necessary for success. Dealers of all sizes and in all regions need to pause and review new options, new technologies, new services, new partners vs. relying on the traditional same old ways, whose time (and generation) may have come and gone.
Reaching out for new business from new customer groups means dealers may have to pivot to reach them where and how they live. The good news from a key RMR perspective, today’s tech-savvy consumers likewise fully expect, adopt and embrace adding new subscriber services, as evidenced by their omnipresent phones and insatiable need for increased network bandwidth.
SSI: Finish this sentence: 2025 will be remembered as the year that the security industry …
Jones: Increased consumer adoption rates.
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