Artificial intelligence is transforming physical security by cutting response times and boosting efficiency. In a recent discussion, Abraham Alvarez, vice president of product management for cameras at Verkada, explains how these advances empower organizations to act faster against threats and analyze operations more effectively.
Alvarez notes that rapid access to video plays a crucial role in stopping incidents or starting a lockdown. “It’s incredible to see how rapidly AI is transforming security already. One of the biggest overarching benefits is speed. That means that whether you’re trying to speed up how quickly you can trigger a lockdown or simply tracking down security footage of an incident, you can take action instantly. Solutions like Verkada AI-Powered Search are a great example of the value of speed: organizations can search for specific footage with natural language, like “person in a red jacket last Friday,” to quickly find footage of people or vehicles within minutes – compared to hours before AI.”
Beyond quick searches, AI-driven alerts notify teams about potential risks at once. Alerts can identify a certain vehicle, such as “a red pickup truck with an orange bumper sticker,” flag when an unauthorized person approaches a zone or warn if a space is about to exceed its occupancy threshold. These automated notifications let security staff or facility managers act sooner, armed with the right context. These alerts reduce manual checks and speed up response times.
Alvarez highlights another capability with history playback across multiple cameras. “Verkada History Player Search builds on Verkada’s suite of powerful AI-powered investigative tools. With a single click, History Player Search uses advanced computer vision analytics to generate a chronological playback of an individual or vehicle’s movement across all cameras, making it easy to find key moments, jump to events, and share clips as part of an Incident Report.”
Historically, teams had to review video streams from each camera by hand. History Player Search removes that repetitive work by automatically stitching together footage from every camera at a site. Security, safety or operations teams can trace an unauthorized car’s path into a loading dock or replay steps after a slip-and-fall incident in seconds. Investigators can export clips or annotations to share with stakeholders without leaving the platform. This gives large enterprises and multi-site operators precise insights at scale.
Privacy and confidence rank high among design goals. “Privacy and trust are principal to all of our product design, which matters for new AI technology. All of our People Analytics features are disabled by default, giving organizations full control over when and how these AI-powered features are used. We’ve added safeguards for features that leverage vision and language models, including query moderation to prevent inappropriate or biased searches. And to guarantee accountability, administrators can review platform activity and queries through audit logs, providing full visibility into how these tools are being used.”
Alvarez predicts that AI will expand the role of security systems beyond threat detection into tools that boost overall operations. “AI is transforming physical security systems from safety tools into sources of operational intelligence. The same system that detects threats will also optimize business, analyzing customer traffic for retailers or monitoring production lines for manufacturers. This shift transforms security from a cost center into a value-generating tool that actively improves an organization’s efficiency and bottom line, providing insights for security, safety, and operations.”
