2020: What’s Trending?

At the beginning of the year before the times of COVID-19 we looked into the top trends facing the Security industry for 2020 to see global and national security advancements. These are the findings that we found:

1. Biometrics go Multi-modal
The biometrics market is predicted to climb from USD 33.0 billion in 2019 to reach a massive USD 65.3 billion by 2024, with the rise of biometrics-as-a-service sure to bolster this growth. The technology is already widely being adopted to replace pins and password, pay for goods, unlock our phones, access buildings and usher us swiftly through airport security. Expect to see more multi-modal security protocols incorporating biometrics, along with new technologies such as Facial Liveness and fingerprint capillary mapping in response to the Deepfake threat. Clearview, developed right here in Australia, has opened a can of worms about the ethics surrounding facial recognition technology – 2020 will no doubt see governments and courts continue to wrangle the intricacies of data security and civil liberties.

2. Unmanned Security Takes Off
From deliveries, filming, conservation and agriculture, and building inspections to law enforcement and military, emergency response, and even finding koalas injured in the recent bushfires, the use of drone technology has really taken off lately. An effective tool in risk mitigation and detection already widely used within security and the military, drone use will to protect people and public spaces will continue to grow. The UAE will be the first to allow drones for smart city securityin a collaboration between the United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority and Nokia.
Despite seeing more implementation of robots, particularly in law enforcement and bomb disposal, their use within the security sector remains in its infancy. Will 2020 will be the year robots step off the sidelines and take a piece of the action? This year’s Japan Olympics will be a good test.

3. Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning go Mainstream
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have transformed CCTV, offering a whole array of state-of-the-art solutions for event detection, behavioural analysis, object detection, classification and indexing. In 2020, smart built-in video analytics and facial detection powered by deep learning will become more accessible thanks to cloud-based analytics offerings, making it the year that AI video surveillance goes mainstream. Algorithm research and refinement will continue to drive efficiency, accuracy and innovation. Watch out for wider adoption of analytics by law enforcement and government, and for emergence of new technologies such as micro-expressions.

4. Open-platform Approach Drives Innovation
A radical shift towards an open platform-based approach to security system design in recent years and a move away from propriety solutions, has led to unified systems replacing older, less flexible proprietary installations. Made easier by camera-agnostic Video Management Systems that can support a large number of devices and cameras, plus wider adoption of interoperability protocols such as ONVIF, this new openness has given the security industry flexibility to create innovative solutions to real-world problems. Expect to see more of this in 2020.

5. Cybercriminals Harness New Technologies
The threat of cybercrime is not going away any time soon. The IoT, cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence, along with the introduction of 5G, autonomous vehicles, robots and various other new technologies, means the cyber-attack surface keeps getting larger, increasingly vulnerabilities. At the same time, these technological developments mean more sophisticated threats. Artificial intelligence will become both a target and tool, keeping us on our toes. From interfering with automation tasks and critical infrastructure to using AI to automate attacks, or create deepfakes in ransomware and phishing attacks, cybercrime is going to get sophisticated in 2020 and cybersecurity will step up to the challenge.