Publisher's Viewpoint: Happy 30th SECURITY DEALER

Oct. 27, 2008

Despite the new construction slowdown and slumping housing sales, the security industry continues to be a robust marketplace. Your business is changing, from product installation and integration to the way you sell, market and manage your daily operations.   Fortunately, dealers, integrators and technicians understand that they need to change and adapt to stay competitive and grow their business and that's just what they are doing.  

While change is always exciting and full of unknowns, in and of itself it is nothing new to the security industry. As SECURITY Dealer celebrates its 30 th anniversary of covering this constantly changing industry as a monthly magazine, who better to reach out to than SECURITY Dealer's founding publisher Arnold Blumenthal?   During a recent trip to New York I had the pleasure to sit down with Arnold over lunch and he recounted for me the rich history of this magazine.

In November of 1970 SECURITY Dealer got its start as part of Security Industry & Product News (SIPN) . Once a foothold had been established, SIPN was officially published in January of 1971 on a bi-monthly basis. SIPN was mailed to over 40,000 security professionals, including 15,000 dealers. At that time there weren't any distributor networks set up just yet so with the help of ADEMCO (currently Honeywell Security) they mailed the magazine out from their warehouses. In 1972 SECURITY Dealer was published as a separate part of SIPN , and finally in 1978 SECURITY Dealer reached the status of being published monthly.  

From these humble beginnings many mergers and acquisitions have taken place and with the publishing of this issue, SECURITY Dealer becomes SECURITY Dealer & Integrator (SD&I) magazine.   At our editorial helm is Deborah O'Mara, assisted by Greg McConnell, associate editor. For more information regarding the reason for this change, read O'Mara's column on page 10. The Cygnus Security Group is led by Group Publisher Susan Whitehurst, who has received numerous industry accolades and a Sara E. Jackson Memorial Award from the National Burglar and Fire Alarm Association and continues to be active in the organization as well as the Security Industry Association and the Central Station Alarm Association. Our sister publications include: Security Technology & Design the no. 1 technology focused, end-user publication fronted by industry veteran Steve Lasky and Managing Editor Paul Rothman ; Locksmith Ledger International , led by Gale Johnson and Nancy Brokamp ; and our exclusive and leading Web portal SecurityInfoWatch.com headed by Associate Publisher and Editor Geoff Kohl and Publisher Paul Caplan.

Our experts have a keen sense to recognize the most subtle changes and shifts in our industry.   We adapt to cover the evolving needs of the marketplace, our readers and our advertisers. We realize that security is more than just news, it's more than products and it's more than simply integration and convergence. We take pride in our editorial and the Cygnus Security Group offers the best journalistic content to the electronic security professional.

I would ask you, our readers, to continue to challenge us, as well as the manufacturers, distributors and others you do business with to seek and find the information you need to do your jobs better. At SD&I , that's what we feel we are here for—to provide what you need to become a success at what you do.

Welcome to the new SECURITY Dealer & Integrator magazine and a new year full of wonderful opportunities and challenges.