Six Key Technology Trends Affecting the Security Sector in 2025

By Johan Paulsson, CTO, Axis Communications

We’ve once again reached the time of year when we look ahead to some of the technology trends that will affect the security sector over the coming 12 months. The pace of change is as fast as ever.

AI, cybersecurity, privacy, the need for resilience in critical entities… All these (and more) will be the focus of proposed and new regulation. We haven’t highlighted this as a specific trend, but it’s no less a priority and something every organization will need to respond to. 

Hybrid Solutions: The Foundation for Freedom of Choice

The drivers for the choice of architecture will be unique to every organization, taking into account technological, legal, ethical and governance concerns and requirements. The environment is evolving quickly, and therefore freedom of choice is imperative. 

Hybrid solutions give freedom of choice to store video, look at video or manage devices etc. Either by combining edge, cloud, and on-premise technologies to get an optimal total system solution or utilizing its flexibility choose the instance you prefer.

AI Evolution Alongside AI Efficiency

Generative AI models are large and require much compute capacity to execute, which creates a debate in how to balance the cost of AI (both in terms of financial investment, but also in terms of energy use and environmental impact) with its value. A lot of effort is being put into reducing the size of the models while maintaining the quality of results. The increased use of AI technologies only reinforces hybrid architectures as the standard.

Over time there is a big opportunity to dramatically change the efficiency and effectiveness of security operations. Algorithms will be able to understand what is happening in a scene and react to anomalies, based on the analysis on different types of input data, including but not limited to visual information. Input data will come from radar, audio, and numerous other sensors.  This will create solutions that enable increasingly proactive capabilities and generate valuable insights in security scenarios for long term planning. 

Beyond Safety and Security Becomes Real

The application of increasingly advanced computer vision, audio, access control and other connected technologies continues to serve security and safety use cases. Greater accuracy of analytics through the application of AI – particularly in object recognition – means that incidents can be responded to more quickly and effectively than ever before.

This trend highlights the opportunities for increased collaboration across customer organizations. Technology being sourced or specified for one use case could well be used in another area of a business’s operations. For instance, data being created by video cameras employed principally for security purposes can be analyzed over time to improve customer or employee experience, sustainability, or process efficiency.

The “Rebirth” of Image Quality

The paradigm shifts when we consider that images are now often being initially viewed and analyzed by computers rather than humans, and that images are being viewed continuously, rather than when an incident of interest has taken place. 

Advances in analytics and AI mean that a higher resolution image will inevitably lead to a better result, whatever the use case. Object recognition will be more accurate and more detailed data (and metadata) created. The drive towards even better image quality has been reignited. 

The Long-Term Value in Products Comes Through Software Support

At the higher end of the security sector, the quality of hardware has been improving year-on-year. Today, hardware devices can be of such high-quality – particularly in terms of performance and capabilities – that expectations about their lifetime are greater than ever. 

But while quality hardware can last for many years – as illustrated by the length of warranties – the defining factor in a camera’s functionality, including cybersecurity, and therefore its lifetime value, comes through ongoing software support.

Technology Autonomy to the Customer’s Benefit

Our role, and that of our partner ecosystem, is ultimately to focus on meeting the needs of customers. Technology for technology’s sake serves nobody’s purpose – innovations must be aligned to the priorities of the end user. 

We’re already seeing companies that would have traditionally been seen as software vendors designing their own semiconductors to gain more control over their service delivery – particularly in the area of AI – and we foresee this trend continuing in all sectors. Core technology independence is a trend we’re proud to say we’re some way ahead of, having developed our own system-on-chip, ARTPEC, for the last 25 years.