Impact of 2020 on the Video Surveillance Industry
No one could have anticipated what the year 2020 would be bringing us. No one was prepared to face a pandemic or a lockdown. With governments recommending social distancing and workplaces pushing for work-from-home policies, the challenges as a security company to protect your residential plots, corporate houses and other sites mounted quickly.
Surprisingly, security providers who had an offshore team before the pandemic were able to weather the difficulties with minimum disruption. Which security agencies who have been in the business for a while, there is a real danger of getting into a false sense of safety just because client sites are equipped with fancy equipment or because historically, there have not been any adverse incidents. An offshore security team can help security agencies break through this barrier to ensure they are not just relying on sophisticated equipment but also have intelligent remote guards monitoring client sites in real-time. This is exactly why a video monitoring team is a necessity in today’s competitive security market. Look at these stats about crimes that happened when security companies do not have enough manpower looking at security footage in real-time.
- The retail industry faced over 275 million accidents alone.
- Small to mid-cap organizations were 80% more vulnerable to theft.
Many times, these crimes happen because there wasn’t enough manpower available to thwart criminals. A property under 24/7 video surveillance with remote guards and voice down protection can make a criminal think twice before committing a crime and will keep the community safe. So, how can a remote video surveillance team assist security agencies in keeping client property safe?
- Evidence for liability protection
- Real-time monitoring
- Prevention of crimes
- Improving productivity
- Saving cost in the long run
- Improving customer service
Just because your client’s property is well-equipped with a video security system that has cutting-edge thermal cameras does not mean the site is safe from the threat of crime. Just because historically, the neighborhood has been a safe haven, doesn’t mean that no security issues will crop up in the future! In 2020, the world saw how the security industry responded to the domino effect of the pandemic ranging from riots to lockdown to political unrest — security agencies played a critical role in maintaining security and stability. You can check out how Covid-19 has changed the security dynamics of parking areas, shopping centers, hospitals, stockrooms and residential areas in our blog on Impact of 2020 on the video surveillance industry where we took a comprehensive look at the state of the video surveillance and alarm monitoring industry in 2021.
One example of how the security industry was able to do a quick pivot involved asset protection with respect to the distribution of the Covid-19 vaccines. According to an article in Vox, “While the federal government has managed to ship tens of millions of doses of vaccines to states, getting vaccines from storage facilities to patients’ arms has proven a bigger logistical challenge than officials apparently anticipated.” Tens of millions of dollars worth of vaccines also come with a lot of security challenges. Many lessons were learned regarding the changing face of security over the course of the past year and what it will take to provide dependable security in the years to come.
Looking into future trends, there are many opportunities for growth hidden inside this stage of transformation within the global security industry. The future may seem uncertain, but the literature we encountered during our research-validated our understanding that there is a growing significance of remote security services in day-to-day business functioning. As the world is slowly normalizing, the need for remote monitoring is now more acute than ever.
For more detailed information on what the experts have to say about the video surveillance industry, check out our whitepaper. We conducted evidence-based research to answer the following question -
- Was this pandemic a setback for the security industry?
- How did the dynamics of remote security teams change beyond 2020?
