Don’t be too discouraged if your New Year’s resolution to get yourself in better shape goes by the wayside well before springtime — or has already fizzled out less than three weeks into 2026. Few successfully hold fast to those kinds of pledges.
One resolution that I believe you absolutely can stick with, however, is adopting or expanding your company’s involvement with video monitoring. To put it another way: Although you may not lose inches around your waistline, take solace in knowing your business will most certainly add to its bottom line!
A Year of Enormous Video Monitoring Growth
If one of the last significant industry conferences of 2025 was any indication, 2026 will be a year of enormous growth. The Monitoring Association (TMA)’s OPSTech, which drew a record number of industry professionals to the annual event held just outside Dallas, dedicated its entire opening day to this topic.
As a representative of Elite Interactive Solutions, I was pleased to help set the stage by leading the opening session, “The Vitals of Video Monitoring: Levels, Services, Applications & Success.”
My panel featured executives Shawn Bhalia from Keystone Security Services, Jordan Lippel from ECAM and Joey Usie from Guardian Alarm Systems.
The session centered on event-based video monitoring and, especially, on remote guarding and real-time crime prevention. Among other aspects, it addressed the confluence of factors that are acting as agents of change for the security industry.
Those include substantial advances in the accuracy, speed, application and cost-effectiveness of technologies — in particular, video analytics and artificial intelligence.
Along with that is the paradigm shift from a reactive posture to a proactive response posture; this means better serving the needs of, and providing much more value to, customers, law enforcement, human guards and public safety officers. We’re also talking about providing true situational awareness and eliminating false alarms.
The demand is there and security practitioners now have the means to fulfill it, particularly as awareness, understanding and education pertaining to remote video monitoring begins to rise among end users and providers alike.
The presentation included data indicating that, among the estimated 100 million surveillance cameras deployed within the U.S., only around 5% are being proactively monitored either remotely or onsite. The vast majority of those devices today are either unmonitored or recorded only.
Projected Annual Growth Rate
With a projected annual growth rate of 25%, live and AI monitored camera penetration is going to occur at a rapid clip. This includes adapting and transforming many of the cameras already in the field into recurring monthly revenue (RMR) streams as well as attaching more long-term profitability to the still-robust sales of new imaging devices.
That is a blue ocean of opportunity at our industry’s doorstep right now. And it’s not simply in terms of volume; it’s also significantly higher RMR rates per customer and markedly lower attrition rates to boot.
Many installation and monitoring companies, however, are intimidated, confused or uncomfortable — even disinterested — when it comes to committing the investment, resources and expertise required to properly execute remote video monitoring.
Without question, seeking to add this service capability to an integration or legacy alarm monitoring business is daunting when contrasted with a command center purpose-built for video monitoring.
In fact, small to midsize installing companies that have historically also run their own central stations are increasingly shutting down those obsolescing facilities.
Here’s the great news: By no means does that mean those companies cannot fully participate in the video monitoring revolution.
That’s because there are several choices out there permitting integrators, guard companies, MSSPs and even other monitoring firms to sell, install, service and retain clients while outsourcing remote video monitoring to a third-party specialist.
The expansion and specificity of technologies have ushered in the age of strategic channel partnerships. Remote video monitoring is a prime example of this.
A Lively Video Monitoring Debate
The ensuing OPSTech session, “Clearing the Smoke – Defining, Exploring and Projecting the Future of Analytics,” sparked a lively debate about the impact of automation and human involvement in the video monitoring centers of tomorrow.
YourSix CTO Jacob Hengel maintained that humans will always be necessary in decision-making processes. Meanwhile, Robotic Assistance Devices founder/CEO Steve Reinharz elicited some consternation among the audience by proclaiming that the capability already exists to fully eliminate people from the detect-evaluate-escalate-resolve/dispatch process. Food for thought.
For more on this topic, please join me for a panel I’m leading at ISC West 2026 in Las Vegas in March: “How Remote Video Guarding’s Revolutionary Crime Prevention Generates High-Dollar RMR.”
