From IP-enabled surveillance cameras and smart locks to intrusion detection sensors and biometric access control, physical security technology is rapidly evolving to help companies protect their spaces, people, and critical assets. But significant challenges remain. The operational costs of physical security are rising, the skilled talent pool continues to shrink, and facilities managers must count on smaller teams to do more with less.
However, by moving physical security to the cloud, you can revolutionize your organization’s security posture, gaining unmatched flexibility, cost savings, and scalability, which are essential in today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape. Moreover, you won’t miss out on the advanced features that cloud systems offer, which are crucial for staying ahead of potential security breaches.
Here are five key benefits of cloud-managed physical security systems:
1. Bolster protection with a more proactive security posture.
Given the choice between preventing a damaging security incident or picking up the pieces after the fact, it’s hard to imagine any business choosing the latter. Yet many organizations stay mired in a reactive security model, despite the financial implications of a physical security event. It’s a penny-wise, pound-foolish situation. The small costs of cloud migration more than offset the risk of compounding financial losses stemming from brand reputation damage, regulatory fines, legal fees, and loss of customer trust.
With the right cloud-based platform, implementing proactive measures and avoiding breaches is less costly and labor-intensive. These solutions now offer not only 360-degree visibility, but also integrated analytics that automatically identify patterns and predict potential security incidents. When there is an incident, cloud-managed security solutions accelerate the response, thanks to the availability of real-time data and instant access to key video moments.
2. Accelerate incident response with rapid video retrieval.
When responding to any security incident, speed is critical. With each passing minute, the risks to people and property escalate, and the likelihood of resolution drops precipitously. The key hurdle for most: delivering precise security footage to response teams, fast.
With most on-premises systems, the process of finding relevant video footage can be an hours-long exercise in frustration. Modern cloud-managed platforms make it faster and simpler to retrieve, share, and collaborate on the exact video segment you need. With timestamp- and event-based filtering and other intelligent search capabilities, you can locate precise footage in seconds.
The addition of AI capabilities further accelerates the discovery of suspicious activity. By automating the process for exporting, storing, and sharing video footage, these systems eliminate the costly delays created by legacy systems.
3. Streamline maintenance and automate updates.
The growing number of digital systems required to provide physical security heightens operational complexity. This places additional burden on overloaded facilities teams. Exacerbating this, offline components can present security gaps or cause operational disruptions. To address this with a legacy system, you must monitor each site individually and send personnel from location to location to remedy maintenance challenges—which is both expensive and time consuming.
A cloud-based physical security solution makes it easier to ensure remote access and perform automated updates. This is essential for patching security vulnerabilities and ensuring cameras don’t become a cybersecurity risk. As smaller teams look to cover more ground, they can monitor the status of all infrastructure in real time across the entire organization from a single dashboard. By offering a single cohesive system for the management of digital security systems and devices, you can reduce complexity, manual effort, and costly site visits.
4. Take control and gain organizational agility.
When it comes to proactive security, control is the name of the game. Cloud-managed solutions enhance the operation and administration of physical security technology in several important ways. Security settings can be readily tailored to meet the specific needs of individual facilities and rapid adjustments and reconfigurations can be made in response to new security challenges or changes in facility layout.
Complementing these personalization and adaptability features, a unified platform makes it easier for organizations to train new talent. As many of these systems are new and use new technology, while skilled labor shortages continue, consolidating the right training ensures everyone is operating from a single source of truth.
5. Build a future-proofed platform for every site.
Finally, security teams need to get off the endless upgrade hamster wheel. Knowing that technology change is accelerating, facilities leaders need to have confidence that they can easily incorporate new tech without requiring a forklift upgrade.
The automated updates that cloud-managed solutions provide don’t just save staff travel time—they also ensure that physical security systems are equipped with the latest features and protection. This eliminates the need for costly manual intervention, while making it easier to meet new compliance upgrade requirements. By providing the ability to schedule these updates during off-peak hours, companies can minimize downtime and eliminate disruptions, something that’s challenging with most on-premises systems.
What’s next?
Your greatest physical security challenges will inevitably occur on your organization’s premises—but the cloud is a powerful asset when it comes to catching them quickly. Finally, it’s possible to build a system faster and smarter than the enemy. By embracing this integrated strategy for physical security, you can not only cut operating costs, you can also reduce the time and effort spent on manual upgrades and ensure a resilient security posture that future-proofs your infrastructure and strengthens your defenses.
