The global economic downturn continues to impact enterprises and their security and risk strategies.

As will be reported in the January issue of Security Magazine – in the Zalud Report section -- there is unevenness when it comes to the impact of the downturn on security operations, programs and the purchase of technologies.

Jeff Kessler, managing director at Imperial Capital, made the point in a summary of the 13th annual Securing New Ground security industry conference recently held in New York City. Security Magazine is an event sponsor.

Kessler’s summary quoted keynote speaker, Naren Gershahaney, ADT Worldwide president, as seeing future services going beyond security and into critical business operations. Growth, the ADT executive suggested, will be in higher value-added services including collaborating with IT integrators, in building a business that creates recurring revenues not just from maintenance services or monitoring, but from graduating to physical/business application integration and even business process improvements via physical security.

For security leaders, the bottom line is to squeeze more business uses from legacy security systems and to tee-up new purchases with a similar eye. It can even work with officers; in a previous Security Magazine, the property owner of Philadelphia’s Comcast Center employ and specialty train ambassadors, not guards.

Government Security Spending

When it comes to identity management and video systems, experts at Securing New Ground saw continued strength in the government sector – federal, state and local. In an interview with Frost & Sullivan Security Analyst Dilip Sarangan, he told Security Magazine that “government still will spend money from existing funds and projects.” He also saw growth in using electronic security to protect national and worldwide sports events. In addition, there’s a strong bet that President Barack Obama will create a very senior level CTO or CIO position to deal with both state-federal fusion and federal interdepartmental interoperability issues.