Insight from Managing director of Corps Monitoring, Andrea Strong, who gives her expert opinion on how technological advancements can enhance traditional security methods.
There is a growing gap between rapidly developing technologies and traditional industry methodology. Rather than scramble to keep up, firms need to integrate technologies that keep them up to date with modern threats, but they also need to ensure that changes are cost-effective and pragmatic.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword associated with reduced employability, but human intuition and adaptability will always remain at the centre of security. The industry firstly needs people to address people and complex, volatile and dangerous situations throughout society. However, officers’ safety needs to be considered too.
Digital technology can thrive by enhancing the training of officers, working to reduce their physical risk and better prepare them for a variety of situations. Virtual Reality (VR) training can create interactive and immersive simulated situations to train officers for different tasks like patrolling, and in potentially threatening situations; managing protests, suspect packages, aggressive people, and potential hostile reconnaissance.
The module typically lasts two to three minutes, three to four times faster than traditional training methods. The average 75% VR retention rate is significantly higher than more traditional methods, like 5-10% retention for reading and writing.
The experiential nature of VR training means that security officers face simulated environments that gives them the tools to mitigate potential threats in the future. This training allows security officers to be best prepared at what they do, mitigating risks the public face.
In its current stage, AI is promising but its investment may not yet lead to a return on investment. The roles of remote monitoring of CCTV and alarms, facial recognition software, fingerprint scanning, and automatic number plate recognition may be enhanced in the future. This would be through accessible AI machine learning algorithms that improve on the accuracy of the human eye. For now, though, the presence of these technologies as-is enhances the role of officers every day.
