Maximizing AI: Best practices for physical security teams

5min
Maximizing AI: Best practices for physical security teams

AI is rapidly transforming physical security, offering intelligent and proactive solutions. With over 70% of companies already leveraging AI in some capacity, it’s crucial for physical security teams to embrace a holistic strategy to prepare for this wave of innovation.

However, successfully adopting these advancements requires a strategic approach. This includes unifying legacy systems, implementing robust lifecycle management, and ensuring your infrastructure is ready to harness the full potential of AI.

Here’s a strategic overview of how physical security teams can fully leverage AI to strengthen their security infrastructure:

The potential of AI in Physical Security

Currently, most AI in physical security is concentrated on video management systems (VMS), specifically analyzing camera feeds. While this is a positive step forward, it merely scratches the surface of what AI can truly offer.

AI’s potential extends far beyond video surveillance, offering transformative benefits:

  • Predictive analytics: Anticipating threats by analyzing historical data and real-time events. Studies show this feature cuts security incidents by up to 40%
  • Automated perimeter security: Using AI-powered sensors and drones for real-time intrusion detection and response.
  • Optimized emergency response: Coordinating personnel and evacuation routes during critical situations. AI-driven systems have been shown to improve emergency response times by up to 50%, ensuring better protection of people and assets.

These advancements are exciting, but they won’t work without full visibility into your physical security infrastructure.

Why Lifecycle Management is critical

AI-driven physical security solutions are powerful, but without a structured approach to managing the entire lifecycle of your security infrastructure, their potential can be limited.

Lifecycle management involves planning, deploying, maintaining, and enhancing security strategies to protect your organization’s assets and personnel.

With the speed of innovation ever increasing, a structured approach ensures that your security systems remain effective, adaptable, and ready for the future.

Risks of unstructured management:

  • Integration issues: AI tools often must work with existing systems like cameras, alarms, and access control. Without a structured approach, compatibility problems and data silos can limit effectiveness.
  • Maintenance gaps: AI models require ongoing updates and retraining to stay accurate. Poor maintenance leads to outdated systems and increased vulnerabilities.

A structured lifecycle approach maximizes the potential of AI-driven security, keeping your systems reliable, scalable, and secure over time.

Best practices for AI and legacy system integration

One of the biggest challenges facing physical security teams is integrating AI with legacy systems. The good news? You don’t need to overhaul your entire setup to make it work. A strategic approach can help you modernize without breaking the bank.

Here are eight best practices to prepare your systems for AI:

1. Choose open architecture AI tools

AI tools designed with open architecture can integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure, whether it’s video surveillance, access control systems, or alarms. Open architecture allows AI to communicate with multiple devices and systems, reducing the need for expensive upgrades or replacements.

Pro tip: When selecting AI solutions, prioritize systems such as ONVIF-compliant platforms that support open standards to ensure future scalability and easier integration with diverse systems.

2. Gain complete visibility

Effective security management requires a comprehensive understanding of all system components. You need full visibility of your devices, their locations, maintenance histories, and even their warranties to optimize performance and lifecycle management.

  • Identify weak points: Without a clear picture of your entire security setup – including cameras, access control systems, and perimeter defenses – you could have vulnerabilities you’re not even aware of.
  • Optimize security operations: Visibility reveals how your security components interact, exposing redundancies or gaps and improving processes like guard tours and incident response.
  • Optimize resources: Tracking asset locations, maintenance history, and status allows you to prioritize repairs and upgrades, keeping critical systems operational.

3. Implement AI in phases

Rather than attempting a full-scale AI rollout, start by deploying AI in high-priority areas of your security infrastructure, such as video analytics or access control. Once you’ve seen the benefits, you can gradually expand AI’s capabilities to other parts of your system.

Pro tip: Begin with areas where AI offers immediate improvements, such as anomaly detection in video feeds or optimizing the deployment of security personnel.

By adopting a phased approach, you can minimize risks, maximize your return on investment, and build a robust and intelligent physical security system that adapts to your evolving needs.

4. Centralize your management platform

Managing both AI-driven solutions and legacy systems can be complex. With a centralized platform, security teams can manage all system components, including legacy devices and AI tools, leading to streamlined operations, faster troubleshooting, and easier system upgrades, all from one intuitive interface.

For transportation and logistics, this may mean monitoring AI-powered cameras at loading docks, managing access at secured gates, and tracking the health of legacy alarms across warehouses and vehicles—all in one place.

In healthcare, a security director may choose to focus on centralized platforms that can integrate AI visitor analytics with legacy access systems to secure sensitive areas like pharmacies while tracking device maintenance and optimizing security workflows.

No matter the industry, centralization brings clarity and control, allowing security teams to unify systems, improve efficiency, and future-proof their infrastructure.

5. Train your team for AI adoption

Successful AI integration requires buy-in from your team. Ensure that your security personnel are trained on how to use AI-driven tools effectively and understand how AI enhances their workflows rather than replacing them. This training will help build confidence and ensure that your team can fully leverage AI’s capabilities.

Pro tip: Choose an integrator with expertise in AI-driven solutions. They’ll provide tailored training and support, ensuring your team is ready to use AI tools effectively from the start.

Choosing an integrator with expertise in AI-driven solutions is invaluable. They can:

  • Assess your needs: Help you identify the right AI solutions for your specific requirements.
  • Develop a tailored training plan: Create a customized training program that addresses your team’s specific needs and skill levels.
  • Provide ongoing support: Offer technical support and guidance after the initial implementation.

6. Ensure data consistency across systems

Consistent, reliable data is essential for AI to detect patterns and anomalies effectively, improving overall security operations. Inconsistent data can cause false positives, missed threats, and unreliable insights, undermining the value of AI.

AI algorithms thrive on standardized data, making it critical to ensure legacy systems are properly formatted and aligned before integration.

Pro Tip: Before deploying AI, audit your legacy systems to ensure all data is standardized and properly formatted for seamless AI analysis.

7. Leverage predictive maintenance

Before you go all in on AI make sure your current physical security maintenance is onpoint. Predictive maintenance uses real-time data to identify potential equipment failures before they occur.

Benefits of predictive maintenance:

  • Reduced downtime: Identify issues early to prevent failures and avoid disruptions.
  • Extended lifespan: Address small problems to prolong equipment life and maximize ROI.
  • Improved performance: Keep systems running reliably and at peak efficiency.
  • Cost savings: Prevent unexpected failures and expensive emergency repairs.

This approach extends the lifespan of legacy systems, reduces downtime, and keeps both AI and legacy systems operating smoothly.

8. Regularly evaluate and optimize the integration

AI technology evolves rapidly, and so should your integration approach. Regularly evaluate the performance of your AI and legacy systems, identifying opportunities for optimization.

As AI becomes more ingrained in your security operations, continue to upgrade legacy systems in phases, ensuring that they remain compatible with AI-driven technologies.

How different industries can optimize their AI integration journey:

Transportation and Logistics

Regular evaluations might reveal opportunities to enhance AI’s ability to monitor supply chain assets, such as upgrading legacy cameras at loading docks or optimizing AI for vehicle route monitoring to detect unauthorized access.

Healthcare

Security teams could assess AI-driven visitor analytics and access control performance, ensuring sensitive areas like pharmacies or patient wards remain secure while integrating updates to legacy badge systems for greater accuracy.

Retail

Frequent evaluations could highlight improvements in AI-powered theft detection while phasing out older point-of-sale monitoring systems to streamline real-time alerts for suspicious activity.

Education

Schools may use regular audits to ensure AI tools are effectively monitoring entry points and integrate upgrades to outdated door locks or alarm systems for improved student and staff safety.

Leveraging AI for a Proactive Security Future

AI is reshaping physical security, empowering teams to shift from reactive measures to proactive strategies. But realizing its full potential requires unifying legacy systems and adopting a strong lifecycle management approach to keep your infrastructure efficient and future-ready.

Ready to gain complete visibility and control over your physical security infrastructure? Discover how SiteOwl can empower your team to build a smarter, more proactive security environment.

Su Subburaj

Su is SiteOwl's CMO and leads all marketing and communications. Su has extensive strategy and management consulting experience and previously consulted for 3Sixty Integrated where she gained an in-depth understanding of digital transformation challenges in the physical security industry. When not working on strategies to expand SiteOwl's footprint, Su enjoys bad karaoke, weightlifting and traveling.