Stephanie Haldane, vice president of end user business development for physical access control at HID, reflects on the security sector’s evolution in 2025, highlights the year’s most surprising shift and identifies the primary transformation of the past twelve months.
Photo courtesy of HID
HID will publish Haldane’s take on 2026 predictions in January.
Haldane describes 2025 as a period of change with evident gains:
"2025 has been a transitional year but one with clear upward momentum. Organizations are still working through the effects of hybrid working environments, aging infrastructure and rising cyber expectations. At the same time, we’re seeing a meaningful shift in how requirements are shaped across markets. End users have a growing sense of what they need from modern access and identity solutions and are showing increasing interest in solutions built to deliver ecosystem integration, convenience and strong security. It’s not a full transformation yet, but there is definitely momentum as expectations are becoming more defined and demand is guided by an informed understanding of what effective access and security should look like in their environment. Reports from across the industry reflect this shift. Legacy credentials are still everywhere, yet mobile, biometrics and software-driven platforms continue to gain traction as organizations look for convenience, stronger protection and better data. It has been a year where the industry stopped treating modernization as optional and began treating it as a strategic and logical requirement."
She points to technology trends that shifted team dynamics:
"The speed and depth of the convergence between IT and physical security. IT is no longer a peripheral stakeholder. It has become a central voice in system selection, cybersecurity posture and long-term planning. As access control relies more on software, APIs and cloud services, physical security teams and IT teams are now working side by side. That shift has changed expectations for system agility and for how quickly organizations should be able to update or integrate new technology."
For the most significant change, Haldane highlights a move away from hardware-first investments:
"The shift from hardware-centric buying to integrated ecosystems. Security leaders are choosing platforms that unify access, video, identity management and reporting, instead of investing in one-off components. Open standards, cloud-ready infrastructure, mobile credentialing and software-centric management are reshaping how systems are designed and deployed. This change is creating more resilient environments and giving organizations clearer paths to modernization without ripping out what they already have."
