As part of the panel put together by the Global Security Challenge, ProSecurityZone took part in the process of selecting the nine finalists for the Future of Security competition, the finals of which were held at the IFSEC show last week at the NEC in Birmingham. Selecting the best nine was not easy as the security industry is brimming with talent and innovative ideas so when I attended the finals, I knew that the judges would be looking for something extra special in determining the winner.

Each of the finalists gave a short presentation and answered questions from the panel who scored them based on the four criteria of disruptiveness, Cost-effectiveness, the security pain which they addressed and commercial value.

The winner was 2020 Imaging with the 2020 Touch Panel, a control room suite designed for simplicity of use by control room operators with end-users having been involved in the design process.

As the finals progressed, I made my own assessment of each of the entrants to see how close I would come to the panel's conclusions. 2020 Imaging was also in my top three out of the 9 contestants along with Iomniscient and Audio Analytic. I was keen to stick close to the four criteria and in this respect, I put Audio Analytic at the top of the tree. This young Cambridge based company adds "ears" to surveillance systems using a series of convenient "sound packs" providing sound classification and analysis for the detection of glass breakage, aggression, car alarms or key words. Sound triggers can control the direction of PTZ systems and raise alerts even if the incident is not initially in the field of view. Adding a new dimension to the surveillance process, providing a cost-effective light-weight analytics solution to cameras and creating value by adding to the scope of surveillance without additional camera coverage, Audio Analytic certainly fulfilled the criteria to be amongst the top contenders for this award.