We’re continuing our series featuring 2025 reflections by security industry leaders with Matt Barnette, president and chief executive officer of PSA Network. He’ll share his 2026 predictions in a future post, but in this installment, Barnette looks back at some of the year’s biggest developments in the security industry.
Security Sales & Integration: What kind of year has 2025 been for the electronic security and physical security industries?
Matt Barnette: 2025 has been a “cautiously optimistic but grow-up-or-get-left-behind” kind of year. Demand is strong: global physical/security solutions are growing mid–single to high–single digits with the broader security solutions market projected to significantly by 2030.
Services and recurring models are outpacing the traditional boxes and projects. Integrators that lean into monitoring, managed services and “as-a-service” offerings are seeing better stability and margins. The vibe I get from the PSA membership is that our integrators are generally bullish but they know economic conditions, supply chain weirdness and labor constraints are still lurking in the background.
The short version is decent growth but the industry is being distracted with consolidation and standardization. Integrators need to think like a recurring-revenue tech service, not a project shop.
SSI: What has been the most surprising development in the security industry this year?
Barnette: How fast “AI everywhere” stopped being marketing fluff and started being table stakes. Artificial intelligence at the edge in cameras and devices, plus cloud analytics, has gone from experiment to expectation in many verticals.
End users are asking about outcomes like anomalies, loitering, safety insights and operations data, not just “how many megapixels is this camera?”
At the same time, many organizations are more focused on squeezing value out of their existing investments than ripping and replacing, which has accelerated hybrid deployments and integrations instead of forklift upgrades. The surprise is not that AI arrived; it’s how quickly it became expected and how much pressure that puts on integrators to really understand IT, data and ethics, not just devices.
SSI: What has been the most important change we’ve seen this year in security?
Barnette: I think the most important change is the shift from hardware-led projects to software, platform and services-led programs. Channel evolution, shift of influence from hardware to software, platform aggregation and the rise of SaaS/HaaS/DaaS are literally called out in the SIA 2025 Security Megatrends.
Hybrid cloud physical security (video, access, alarm and audio) is becoming the default design assumption rather than a niche choice. Recurring monthly revenue (RMR) is moving from “nice to have” to “you’re behind if you don’t.”
In practice, that means the winning integrators are those who can design unified platforms, manage lifecycle and cybersecurity and sell long-term service value instead of one-and-done installs.
