When was the last time you interfaced with Siri, Cortana, Google or Alexa? Funny, but slowly and surely we are being taught to use a digital assistant with a human voice. They are in our homes, cars, and mobile devices.

And yet, the risk, resilience, and security industry is still struggling to define the use cases for audio within access control, video surveillance, video management, intrusion, and managed services.

Intuitively we know that audio is needed. Who doesn’t want the voices behind the accident, the intruder, and the active shooter? Not only post event, but during the event as well, when we can still do something about it. And would it not be nice to begin to point our businesses to the usefulness of our security implementation of audio just like we have done for video, before they discover it themselves?

We are starting a series of conversations with the Security Industry Association (SIA). SIA is a member community representing the ecosystem of organizations that shape the risk, resilience, and security industry. They have identified an emerging trend that is changing the way we navigate and interact with information and people. This is audio.

We see it in our consumer applications including our homes, our cars, and our mobile applications.

They have organized a working group which will identify the current status of audio. How is it being leveraged today? What are the use cases that optimize business and security processes? What are the constraints that are keeping audio from helping the industry accelerate these current use cases and then leveraging them for value generation tomorrow?

By doing this, they hope to move audio and voice move from an after thought to truly intelligent communications helping our industry grow in effectiveness and value.

In our newest video, two industry veterans join a SIA representative to discuss the intention of this working group. The participants join Ron Worman, the Managing Director of The Sage Group and The Great Conversation. They are:

• Richard Brent, Chief Executive Officer, Louroe Electronics

• Dan Rothrock, President, Zenitel Americas

• Cameron Walker-Miller, SIA Associate Director of Standards and Technology and Audio and Intelligent Communications Liaison

We urge all industry participants to ask the question “What would it look like to have audio be ubiquitous within the security technology architecture as well as the business?” And then get involved by contacting SIA at cmiller@securityindustry.org.