Burglar alarms aren’t dead—but they are being replaced.
In this episode of Entry & Exit, Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble break down how AI, video, and access control are reshaping the security industry—and why traditional alarm systems are losing value.
They cover what’s driving the shift, how security stacks are consolidating around video, and what operators need to do to stay competitive.
In this episode:
- Why alarms are being “demoted”
- How AI-powered cameras are changing security
- The shift from alarms as triggers to validators
- Why DIY systems are compressing value
- How to use alarm accounts to upsell higher-value services
If you’re in the security or service space, this is your playbook for what’s next.
More Entry & Exit — https://www.entryandexit.co/
Owned and Operated
New Episodes Every Wednesday!
Subscribe For More
Now a video camera can detect your face. You can whitelist, hey, these are the people that I want entering my building.
It's gonna kind of consolidate into video.
AI can also look at is the door open or closed. So there goes your door contact, the rise of AI.
It can feel a little invasive, but the reality is it's gonna happen.
Throw in one camera. You're gonna get them hooked. And by the way, if you're not selling cellular, if you're letting zero landline don't it's 2026.
Welcome to entry and exit. Today we are talking about the death spiral. The death spiral of burglar alarms. They're dying. I don't know. Are they dying or are they just kind of being demoted?
Yeah.
We'll debate.
We'll debate it. We'll talk about it. Uh I don't think they're dying. I think they're no, that's a good point. They're not dead, but they are dying. How about that? Okay. I wouldn't say they're on life support yet, but they're getting close.
They're still sort of, I mean, and for years, they've been the entry point into the security system. I mean, for decades, they were the only security layer that you would have. I think that secure, I think that the simple truth is intrusion alarms are going to be around for a couple more decades, but in the next decade, you're going to see them not being as prevalent uh in terms of investment that people are making. So they used to have, you know, glass breaks, window contacts, door contacts, roll-up door contacts, motion sensors, lots of sirens, etc. And I think it's going to continue to whittle down to a single keypad with exit just uh doors, man doors only, is what I think is probably gonna happen. Um, and then what I think is gonna happen from there is actually they're gonna get rid of the panel and the keypad altogether, and it's just gonna be sensors that tie into a video system.
Yeah. That's kind of the I agree. Like we're aligned on that trend for sure. But yeah, one question, just because we've got you know people that are interested on both the commercial and residential sides. Yeah, we've got friends that run different types of businesses that listen in. Um, do you think that this is um consistent across you know all customer types, or is it more true on the commercial side?
I actually, I'll tell you, I think that I think that it's probably gonna happen faster on the residential side than on the commercial side. Um, and that has to do with the proportion of budget. So a $5,000 burglar alarm system for a residential is a bigger part of a person's personal budget than a $20,000 burglar alarm system in a hundred million dollar business. So I think you're gonna see a lot of the new tech and a lot of the things coming in to the residential side, and I think it's gonna flow into the commercial side from there. Got it.
I mean it's gonna impact both different speeds.
Yeah. I think that burglar alarms used to kind of be the foundation of um all security companies, and now they're kind of the lowest piece, the lowest value
piece. Um but I would say I actually love buying alarm accounts because this is like the best our whole strategy is cross-sell. So I want to and and really the sticker on the wall. So let's just get into some of the secret sauce real quick before we jump into uh why burglar alarms are dead. This is a secret sauce for alarm masters. We love buying a lot intrusion alarm accounts because that is the sticker that's in the signs that's all on the building. So that's who they're gonna call first, generally speaking, for other scopes of work. Hey, I need video cameras, they're gonna call me. I need access control, they're usually gonna call the sticker on the wall. And so that's that's something that we really value a lot.
Yep. And that, frankly, that strategy has worked perfectly.
Yeah.
And, you know, again, the the old model of the secure the the intrusion burglar alarm is you sell, you know, a couple contacts, a couple motions, you know, a couple glass breaks, you put monitoring on top of it. Then we got cellular communication, then we got uh because of cellular, we got Nox, and so we got cellular plus interactive app control. So now you've got three subscriptions. Some people bundle them as one. And um, that's been the model for a long time. And by the way, if you're not selling cellular, if you're letting customers use their landline, don't. Please don't. Just don't. It's 2026. I don't give them, I mean, we don't give them an option that there is no, I mean, they have to be really educated to say, can I just use my landline? It's usually somebody that's worth taking over their security and like I want to use their landline. And we will usually work something out with them, say, hey, for the first year, we'll honor the monitoring only, but like we really don't want to deal with the headaches of your landline because it's not gonna work and we don't want to be responsible for that. So we'll we'll give you the cellular discount for a year, and then in year two and three or whatever, we work something out with them. Talk to
us like, what do you think's gonna replace the intrusion systems? Like, what do you think's what's the next like hot, like what do you think people are gonna invest more money in?
Yeah, it's just heavy, heavy camera. Yeah. Um, so and originally it was, I mean, I think that started, but with the rise of more kind of AI native or AI-centric solutions, um those uh the the capabilities have expanded to where more can live, you know, on the camera. And uh so it's it's gonna kind of consolidate into video.
Yep. Yep, it's true. Um now a video camera can detect your face. You can whitelist um, hey, these are the people that I want entering my building or my home. And if they're not this, then don't let them in. Um they can AI can also look at is the door open or closed. So there goes your door contact.
It's kind of funny the the spectrum or like the um the way things have progressed in this area. So there was nothing that really touched like a person. And then, you know, kind of if you started to introduce like access control, key card ties of oh, now we're gonna use your thumbprint, you know, or something like that, all the way to like kind of bio. It feels it can feel a little invasive, I think, but the reality is it's gonna happen. Like that's that's just like a uh a reality uh that you know no one's gonna be it. It is interesting. There's like a whole privacy thing, you know, related to that, but yeah, it'll just be table stakes. Like eventually everyone will just kind of have to commonly accept it.
I also think there's gonna be a lot more, and we're seeing this like with Brivo with our manufacturer, access control is gonna start taking over a lot of what we'll call the perimeter control. So, like you're gonna have door contacts tied. I mean, door contacts already can be tied into, as we all know, access control systems to give you open close for or door prop notifications. And I and now access control manufacturers are offering monitoring services on those door contacts, and that is wild. Yeah. I've never seen that, and I think it's super smart. Um, and here's another thing I'll tell you that I think another a lot of people are saying, hey, uh the enterprise software space and the physical security space are about to like collide. And I think that that they've they've been we've been talking about that for a long time, and I think to some degree it's true, but I think that it's gonna be more like um building technology and property protection and security are gonna collide. And I think where that's gonna happen a lot is cameras are gonna be used for significantly more than security and safety. They're gonna be used for anything. Uh, you know, if you take a retail application, they're already being used for like hotspot analysis and what displays are working best and whatever, letting you know where employees congregate, et cetera. But I actually think there's this whole other thing. And, you know, shout out to Dean Draco at Eagle Eye. He uh started a company called Swift Sensors that's basically like every kind of building sensor you would need, everything from temperature, humidity, vibration. I don't even know what all they sell, but like even in manufacturing, for example, vibration, uh, they'll put them on their manufacturing lines. And if it gets without a certain bound, they know that there's about to be a maintenance call on that machine. How sick is that? Like so smart. So then you can put that on the machine, you can put a camera over the top of it, and these sensors are nothing. I mean, they're not expensive, and there's just like it's a cloud subscription, it integrates into your video, and you can then tag it and then show, pull up a camera. It's like, did somebody do something to the machine? Like, did somebody hit it, you know, with a forklift? Or is there something going on? And the AI can filter that stuff out for you that's on the camera. So that I think is gonna be a new play for a lot of folks. I think that's gonna be where it's going. Um, yeah.
Why do you think that alarm systems are losing value though? Like, what do you think is the reason for that?
Well, a lot of it was just um like a race to the bottom. Yeah. Um, and you know, DIY when uh when the masses can do something that used to be really expensive and they can do it a lot easier. You're seeing this like in so many ways in different industries, just with the rise of AI, right? Where things that used to be so hard people paid an incredible amount of money for is now all of a sudden uh actually simple or marketed to be so simple. Because some of the DIY, you know, alarm systems, you know, haven't been that great. But um, I think just the entire narrative, it just compresses the value when you know this thing that used to be require a lot of expertise and it was more expensive is now just kind of commonplace.
Yep. I think that here's what I'll say. I I agree with that. I also think that response times by police departments being slower and slower have led to that. And then I think that a lot of these service calls, it's the most common thing to have a service call on is an intrusion alarm. Um, and so I think that that people are tired of that. They don't have service calls on their cameras very often. So I think they're kind of tired of that. And so I think that those are two really important things.
Uh, but I do want to say one thing before, because we're we can cut off here in a second, but like one thing I want to say is this role reversal of how alarms have been in the security stack. So historically, the alarm was the initiator of your security protocol, right? So uh you may have video verification, but you would have, you know, customer or sorry, burglar comes into the building that sets off the alarm, that sends the monitoring station to look at the video cameras, and the video cameras are validating. That is a bad guy. That's not a false alarm, call the police. Now I think it's gonna be the verifier. So I think that cameras are gonna start seeing um people wandering around doing things in your property, and you may or may not have some tolerance for that. Like if it's a church and like we used to hang out in our church parking lot all the time, just like as kids growing up, and mess around outside. And it's like there was really no harm. Maybe we stepped on a couple, you know, flower bushes, but like that they would hang around outside, but then now the monitoring center is gonna use the alarm from the intrusion alarm to set off the verification. Like, yep, they are now here. We know they're here. It's been flagged as a yellow flag. Now they've gone in, now it's a red flag. So it just points directly to the monitoring station. You don't even have to go through the call list. So I think that it's gonna reverse from being the initiator to the validator. Um, and I think that's gonna be, I think it's gonna be its new role. And I think it's really just gonna be perimeter. That's kind of my my gun instinct. So the takeaway for me, and I want to hear your takeaway, is like, man, you need to start selling more video. Um and you got to figure out like, get like y'all, you have enough, probably have enough margin in your alarm systems. Throw in a camera, just one throw in one camera. You're gonna get them hooked. Like, yeah, it is an investment.
I I totally agree. Um, and so you know, to go all the way back to the beginning. Are they dying? No, but they are being demoted and their role is changing.
Yeah, that's a great way to say it. Um, and I think we just as an industry we need to really be dialed in on how can we drive value outside of alarms. Um and I think a lot of folks are trying to figure out how to do that. You know, so start with video. Hey, by the way, if you like this content, we'd we'd appreciate a like or a subscribe. What about you, Steven? Would you appreciate that?
You know, um I would really appreciate it. It would make me feel loved. And yeah, and so I need you if you're watching this. Help me. Yeah, he needs it. He's he needs the lot. I need it. I need it. Come on. Thanks for watching, folks.
We appreciate it. Hope you found it valuable. Thanks.
