In the late 1880s, when electricity was still young, a great conflict arose concerning the medium by which the powered world would receive its electricity: alternating current (AC), the brainchild of Nikola Tesla, and direct current (DC), as promoted chiefly by Thomas Edison. The War of Currents included, among other ploys, the invention of the (AC-powered) electric chair by Edison’s Menlo Park Labs to paint Tesla’s system as deadly.

Today, most people in the tech savvy world of security have seen at least one or two headlines discussing a different holy war of the IT industry: the battle between Microsoft’s Windows operating system (OS) and that of Linux. Devout followers of both platforms frequently and fervently espouse the benefits of one technology over the other, in what has become a heated debate not seen since Tesla vs. Edison. As the convergence of physical security and IT has gained momentum, such debates are no longer solely the domain of Microsoft technophiles or Linux zealots, but becoming practical discussions for security directors worldwide.