IT professionals are increasingly enmeshed in decisions about physical security system purchases. Along with profound influence over budgets and oversight of system data, they bring strict scrutiny of vendors’ risk profiles—making system manufacturers and installers up their game.
While security end users reported that executive leadership is most involved in their security system purchasing decisions, systems integrators and consultants are more focused on technical decision-makers, such as IT and physical security departments, according to the State of Physical Security 2026 report from Genetec.
“The increasing sophistication of physical security operations has compelled the industry to evaluate new, innovative software and hardware. As physical security intersects with other departments and generates mission-critical data, IT has become an active participant in the industry’s technology evolution,” the report said.
The report, which was based on a survey of more than 7,350 physical security professionals worldwide, found that many organizations are already unifying cyber and physical security approaches to system management, with ongoing growth in cybersecurity tool adoption and preventative measures. Specifically, end users have invested in educating and training employees on cybersecurity best practices (70 percent), fine-tuning user permissions and privileges (48 percent), securing data storage (44 percent), hardening security infrastructure (46 percent), and protecting the system from unauthorized access (41 percent).
But IT’s influence reaches beyond cybersecurity measures. IT was the department most frequently involved in physical security purchasing decisions (54 percent), followed by physical security (48 percent), Genetec found in its survey. IT professionals use this sway to examine vendors more closely.
“Especially in enterprise users, when you’re onboarding a system of record, you’re asking things like: What does the (development) life cycle look like? How often are you releasing features? What does the innovation pattern look like?” says Andrew Elvish, chief marketing officer at Genetec. “People are asking questions about what value they will get out of this over the long term, and especially the IT buyers—they’re much more inclined to think of things from term-based licensing approaches, because they want to be able to vote with their feet.”
In many IT systems and Web services, licensing agreements enable end users to exert more control over their tech stack and partners, instead of locking them into long-term, restrictive contracts, he says.
That mindset is changing how security service and technology providers—including Genetec—are communicating with potential customers, Elvish adds. IT buyers expect to see evergreen software with habitual patching, consistent and timely firmware upgrades, penetration testing documentation, and a viable product roadmap.
“We’re doing way more VRAs—vendor risk assessments. It’s like a baseline before anything is brought on,” he says. “From that perspective, it’s driving a very different mindset in the physical security space…. It took a good 20, 25 years for the change to percolate through more deeply, but I think now any customer of any significant size will be asking for that and expecting that. It puts a huge pressure on software organizations.”
Customers are asking for VRAs that look at standard issues like financial health or how the company is owned and structured, but security technology VRAs go even deeper, Elvish adds. Users are asking about who has access to the software and its databases, how vendors manage keys and passwords, what certifications the company or software holds and how they are maintained, how often companies audit programs and products for compliance, and more.
“You look at companies with hundreds of thousands of employees—they’re not going to bring on a software to manage their global operations without asking a lot of very detailed questions,” he says.
The State of Physical Security Report 2026 bore that out, finding that customers place more value on long-term alignment and vendor stability today, far outpacing typical measures like pricing. End users “expect partners to bring design and deployment expertise, deliver solutions that maximize value, and reduce the total cost of ownership,” the report said.
| When it comes to working with physical security vendors, what are you looking for? (Multiple responses allowed.) |
|
|
Long-term viability and stability |
73 percent |
|
Perceived performance of products |
45 percent |
|
Pricing |
43 percent |
|
Portability and migration technologies |
39 percent |
|
Flexible contract terms and exit strategies |
37 percent |
|
Using one vendor for most systems |
31 percent |
|
Open architecture |
29 percent |
Security systems providers need to have a “decathlon of skills” today to keep up with the complexity of end users’ demands, especially when so many departments have a stake in purchases and operations, Elvish says.
“You have to know physical security, you have to know risk analysis, you have to know IoT networks. You have to know all sorts of things about storage and managing huge blobs of data,” he says. “Plus, you need to have people who know how to focus (systems) and point them in the right direction. That can be really rarified air.”
He recommends that vendors, system manufacturers, and integrators pool resources and knowledge to provide end users with the kind of support and structure they currently demand, especially around hybrid cyber–physical risks and system compliance.
That also means training integrators and security systems dealers about how to sell solutions to decision-makers outside the security department. Genetec put learning packages together for its channel partners to help them understand the changing dynamics of what it means to sell into the enterprise space.
“It’s incumbent upon us to be good shepherds of our customers, who are our channel partners. Show them that you know you should expect hidden buyers in the B2B buying process,” Elvish says. “Those are the buyers who come in at the end. They weren’t part of the buying group, but all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Shoot, why is the CISO here?’ Or, ‘why is the legal department here?’”
Those surprise decision-makers can often derail an underprepared sales pitch as they bring in other perspectives or requirements from across the business, and they are often very sensitive to brand reputation risks—making them leery of companies they have never heard of, Elvish adds.
It’s a huge challenge for channel professionals or even physical security professionals at large, because “the comfort zone is to talk to the tech people, to talk to IT and physical security,” he says. “But you can see that end users spend much more time talking to the CFO, talking to CISOs, CFOs, and sometimes CEOs about what they’re investing in. If the end user is completely on their own in that discussion, it’s anybody’s guess how well it will go.”
Claire Meyer is editor-in-chief of Security Management. Connect with her on LinkedIn or via email at [email protected].