Imperial Capital’s Key SNG Highlights

The following passage is an excerpt from a Nov. 3 research report from Imperial Capital.

We attended the 19th annual Securing New Ground® (SNGTM) Conference, held in New York City, N.Y., from Oct. 29-30, 2014. Securing New Ground® is one of the largest security industry conferences, and is sponsored by the Security Industry Association. This conference differs from other industry events in that there are only issues-oriented panels of speakers and no promotional booths.

Attendance was by invitation and was overwhelmingly C-level executives. Key topics included:

• The overwhelming need for improved analytics to make sense of and applying actionable intelligence to Big Data coming from exponentially growing numbers of sensors
• The growth of the security recurring monthly revenue (RMR) market and ADT’s move into the small-and-medium business (SMB) area
• Market studies by leading consultants on the overall electronic security industry, and also drilling down specifically on video and access control and electronic locks

Of the 12 commercial- and institutional-related panels at SNG, about 10 of them ended up concluding that making sense of all this data and allowing the end users to take corrective actions (and in some cases prevent events from occurring) is a key value proposition for the industry over the next five years. IT security will be focused on protecting and responding to events around the IT network. So-called “physical” security will be tasked with the logistics and the provisioning of the sensors (e.g., video, ID, access, intrusion) that provide such data to the network.

However, we believe it will be those companies (whether in the IT or physical realm) that can make sense of the data coming from these inputs, and help companies’ and institutions’ executives and comply better that will reap the highest rewards. We believe Outperform-rated Verint Systems (VRNT) and NICE Systems (NICE) should particularly benefit if this thesis proves to be correct.

We believe that big data will be critical in improving profits at companies ranging from inventory and point of sale (POS) and customer flow at retailers to saving millions of compliance fines at regulated industries (e.g., health care, financial, utilities) to determining where companies should set up facilities in less safe regions. Forensics and fraud detection were also key components of the ongoing theme around actionable intelligence.

For more information, contact Imperial Capital Associate Saliq Khan at saliq.khan@imperialcapital.com.

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association (SIA).