Pro-Vigil founder: Education key to adopting AI into physical security

By Cory Harris, Editor
Updated 1:24 PM CST, Wed January 22, 2025

SAN ANTONIO, Texas—Pro-Vigil Founder Jeremy White can sum up in one word why businesses aren't more quickly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) as part of their physical security strategy – education.
Sixty-six percent have not integrated AI into their security strategy, while 27% don't even know if they're using AI, and only 7% say they utilize AI as a crime deterrent, according to “The State of Physical Security Entering 2025,” the fifth annual report from Pro-Vigil, a provider of AI-enabled remote video monitoring (RVM), management and crime deterrence solutions.
“I don't think there's a fear factor in AI,” White explained. “I think it's purely the education of how AI is helping us prevent physical security threats. What we brought out of this as an executive team was that we need to do better training with our teams on talking about the reasons that AI helps us do what we do in a much better way.”
White cited, as an example, businesses that “hate trying to pull video,” which can be what he called a “daunting task.” Adding an AI component to a VMS could allow them to search by vehicle, by day, or any other data point at their fingertips with an easy-to-use user interface.
“We know how it helps, say in our monitoring center, but does the customer understand the difference in those leveraging AI versus those that are not, and the true benefit to them,” he explained. “I think those of us that are leveraging it, even just on the back end where it may not be customer facing, can do a better job of explaining how our investment in AI is a benefit, with the impact it could have on their business. The investment that we're making translates directly to their bottom line.”
The report also found that companies appear to have finally discovered the full return on investment they can get out of RVM. Forty-five percent of respondents said their businesses are using RVM services as opposed to simple record-and-store video surveillance (35%). In addition, only 40% - down from 47% in 2023 - said they exclusively use RVM for security surveillance, with 39% using it to monitor worksite conditions, 24% to keep track of customer/employee liability incidents and 22% for employee performance.
“We're seeing those organizations adopt RVM solutions across the board, making decisions at a higher level instead of a local-level manager concerned with his immediate needs,” White said. “I do believe RVM has gone from, ‘If you need it, we'll find you the budget’ to ‘We're putting it in our plans. We're putting in our budgets.’”
Although the report seemed to indicate that businesses are not doing enough to prevent physical security incidents, White predicts that more companies will embrace AI’s value in deterring crime and, ultimately, protecting their bottom line in the coming year.
“In the RVM world, video monitoring at a smaller level can manage the events coming in, but as you scale, AI doesn't replace people,” he noted. “AI helps them do a better, quicker, faster, more accurate job. The adoption within the security industry to leverage AI is absolutely a must for scalability.”
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