In this exclusive interview with Security Sales & Integration, Abraham Alvarez, vice president of product management, cameras, Verkada discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping physical security by enhancing speed, efficiency and proactive threat management.
The following conversation explores how tools like Verkada’s AI-powered search enable organizations to locate specific footage in seconds, while real-time alerts and advanced analytics help teams detect risks earlier and make more informed decisions, turning security systems into comprehensive safety and operational tools.
Security Sales & Integration: How is AI transforming physical security?
Abraham Alvarez: It’s incredible to see how rapidly AI is transforming security already. One of the biggest overarching benefits is speed. That means that whether you’re trying to speed up how quickly you can trigger a lockdown or simply tracking down security footage of an incident, you can take action instantly. Solutions like Verkada AI-Powered Search are a great example of the value of speed: organizations can search for specific footage with natural language, like “person in a red jacket last Friday,” to quickly find footage of people or vehicles within minutes – compared to hours before AI.
More broadly, AI is helping organizations shift from just reacting to threats to taking a holistic, proactive approach to security. With capabilities like intelligent real-time alerts, teams can detect issues earlier and make more informed decisions, whether that means identifying a specific vehicle, such as “a red pickup truck with an orange bumper sticker,” receiving an alert when a prohibited individual approaches the property, or being notified when a room is nearing its occupancy limit.
SSI: Verkada’s new History Player Search capability will be on display at GSX. Can you tell us more about it and share some examples of how this feature is helping customers?
Alvarez: Verkada History Player Search builds on Verkada’s suite of powerful AI-powered investigative tools. With a single click, History Player Search uses advanced computer vision analytics to generate a chronological playback of an individual or vehicle’s movement across all cameras, making it easy to find key moments, jump to events, and share clips as part of an Incident Report.
This is a powerful tool, especially for large and distributed enterprises. History Player Search eliminates the complexity and inefficiency of manually reviewing footage across dozens of cameras by automatically stitching together a chronological view of an individual or vehicle’s path across all cameras at a single site. This makes it easier to investigate workplace safety incidents or understand how an unauthorized vehicle accessed a restricted area, enabling teams to act quickly, confidently, and with greater context.
SSI: What steps is Verkada taking to ensure AI features are designed with privacy, ethics, and user trust in mind?
Alvarez: Privacy and trust are principal to all of our product design, which is especially important when it comes to new technology like AI. All of our People Analytics features are disabled by default, giving organizations full control over when and how these AI-powered features are used. We’ve added further safeguards for features that leverage large vision and language models, such as query moderation to prevent inappropriate or biased searches. And to ensure accountability, administrators can review all platform activity and queries through detailed audit logs, providing full visibility into how these tools are being used. You can find more details on how we’re responsibly deploying AI across our platform on our Trust Hub.
SSI: How do you see AI in physical security evolving?
Alvarez: AI is transforming physical security systems from safety tools into sources of operational intelligence. The same system that detects threats will also optimize business, analyzing customer traffic for retailers or monitoring production lines for manufacturers. This shift transforms security from a cost center into a value-generating tool that actively improves an organization’s efficiency and bottom line, providing insights for security, safety, and operations.
Visit Verkada at booth 3113 at GSX 2025 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Sept. 29 to Oct 1, 2025. Follow along with SSI as we compile the latest news from GSX 2025. Check out (or bookmark) our GSX 2025 hub page today.
