The Dead End in the Security Industry

Attendees of this year’s largest security exhibition in China, CPSE, held in Shenzhen, expressed a common sentiment: a noticeable absence of groundbreaking technological innovations. This observation isn’t surprising.

Presently, there is a burgeoning trend advocating for the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into all products. Regrettably, the AI surge within the realm of security industry predominantly centers on visual or image processing technology. This surge had its zenith during the era of China’s AI Four Little Dragons: SenseTime, Megvii, Yitu, and CloudWalk. However, developments in image processing for CCTV monitoring, license plate recognition, fingerprints, and facial recognition have reached a maturity stage, with subsequent innovations being incremental.

The upcoming AI trend is pivoting towards text-based technologies, exemplified by systems like ChatGPT and large-scale language models (LLM). Yet, this transition encounters a hurdle in the security industry due to its reliance on big data, with the valuable data primarily derived from images rather than text. Scenarios demanding substantial amounts of text are rare in the security sector.

Moreover, security products, despite their breadth, inherently possess limitations—they operate at the periphery and cannot infiltrate a client’s core operations. For instance, surveillance, access control, smart lock and other security measures provide peripheral defense, ensuring safety but not delving into the client’s core business operations. The data generated by security systems is, therefore, not inherently valuable to the businesses they serve. Consequently, the next AI trend appears to be outside the purview of the security industry.

Unless the security industry is willing to dismantle its barriers, draw lessons from tech giants, and transcend its traditional boundaries during the era of digital transformation, it will struggle to create significant development space. This is exemplified by the conspicuous absence of the world’s largest surveillance manufacturer, Hikvision, from the exhibition. Internal sources revealed that the security content was insufficient to cover its existing product portfolio.

The digital age offers a unique opportunity for industries: the flow of data across various scenarios, activities, and fields. As FingerTec, our flagship product, initially emphasized security through irreplaceable fingerprints, we evolved in the TimeTec era into a comprehensive HR ecosystem. Similarly, FingerTec, initially focused on fingerprint-based access control systems replacing RFID cards, has transformed into a smart township ecosystem covering core aspects of property management. The extracted data is now invaluable to businesses, enabling them to analyze and enhance processes and services, thereby boosting productivity.

As the security exhibition progresses, mirroring the industry’s trajectory, it is poised to enter a contraction stage. Only by capitalizing on the opportunities presented by digitization can industry players break through the deadlock and usher in the next era of brilliance.

 

 

About Author:

Teh
Hon Seng, Group CEO of TimeTec Group of Companies. Prior to forming
TimeTec, Teh led PUC Founder (MSC) Bhd to be listed on MESDAQ (ACE)
market of Bursa Malaysia in 2002. Teh initiated the R&D in
fingerprint technology in 2000, which later developed into a renowned
global brand for commercial fingerprint product known as FingerTec. In
2008, he foresaw the trend of cloud computing and mobile technology, and
over the years, he had strategically diversified and transformed its
biometric-focused products into a suite of cloud solutions that aimed at
workforce management and security industries including smart
communities and digital building system that centered around the cloud
ecosystem. Teh has more than 20 patents to his name, and he is also a
columnist in a local newspaper and a writer of several books.