AI Rises Above Cybersecurity and Takes First Place in SIA’s 2021 Megatrends List

The high ranking of AI in the SIA Megatrends list is partly due to it being in the product roadmaps for nearly all security technology solutions.

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In the Security Industry Association’s 2021 Security Megatrends (SIA Megatrends) list, AI has risen above cybersecurity for first place.

The selection of 2021’s Security Megatrends was based on fall 2020 focus groups, interviews and survey data gathered from top security industry business leaders, in addition to input from Securing New Ground (SNG) conference speakers.

Each year, SIA produces the Security Megatrends report, which is made available to SIA member companies and registered attendees of SNG, the security industry’s executive conference. The Security Megatrends are the top forces at play in security, expected to have far-reaching impacts on businesses across the industry.

As such, these trends play an instrumental role in the insights and discussions at SNG, which runs virtually Oct. 21-22, an annual conference bringing together the leading entrepreneurs, luminaries, CEOs and investors in the security industry for top-level information sharing, networking and business analysis.

For the first time, artificial intelligence (AI) has been named the top Security Megatrend, rising from second place in the 2020 Megatrend report, and the fifth-ranked position in 2019’s report.

Related: AI, IoT, Analytics and Other Emerging Tech Will Be Crucial in Post-Pandemic World

Input from survey participants and from focus groups and interviews indicated that AI — along with AI variants such as machine learning, deep learning and artificial neural networks — were in the product roadmaps for nearly all security technology solutions.

The cybersecurity of physical security systems and solutions, which had held the top spot for the last two Security Megatrends reports, retained its influence, and was ranked second, behind AI.

Given the impact of the pandemic, respondents’ input also placed the trend of touchless/frictionless on the top 10 list of trends; the frictionless trend had previously been identified as a micro-trend.

Also new to the 2021 ranking of trends was the trend of predictive data analytics, which would assist in providing meaningful insights into the volume of data that IoT devices and security and software systems can create, and the trend of responsive environments and intelligent spaces – indicating the application of technology solutions to automate and elevate environments such as homes, buildings and cities.

The 2021 Security Megatrends are:

  1. Artificial Intelligence
  2. Cybersecurity of Physical Security
  3. Predictive Data Analytics
  4. Connectivity and the IoT of Everything
  5. Cloud Computing
  6. Touchless & Frictionless Solutions
  7. Facial Recognition
  8. Responsive Environments & Intelligent Spaces
  9. Emphasis on Data Privacy
  10. Move to Service Models

SIA says the Security Megatrends will be an underlying theme at the Securing New Ground conference and will be woven into numerous sessions and panels, in addition to being the focus of a session presented by SIA’s Security Megatrends advisor Steve Van Till, who will be surveying attendees for additional feedback on the impact of the Security Megatrends. Click here to learn more about the SNG virtual conference.

This post premiered on our sister site, Security Sales & Integration.

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