Two technologies I talk about frequently are biometrics and automated license plate recognition (ALPR). As a police officer, I saw the clear value that ALPR cameras bring to solving crimes early on.

Biometrics, on the other hand, is a technology I believe in, but I am cautious about how much personally identifiable information (PII) I am willing to hand over. Yes, it can be frictionless and offer ease of entry, but I'll take the quote from Donata Stroink-Skillrud, Legal Expert and President of Termageddon: "If someone steals your biometric, what is the next course of action?" 

I talk about biometrics frequently but use them only when necessary, which gets me to the point of this month's Tech Trends. The last few months have been filled with the troubling new perception that security technology is anything but secure. We all know the statement "if it bleeds, it reads," and mainstream news as well as security industry scuttlebutt have both turned their attention to a few security technologies with question, outrage, and dismissal – resulting in end-users removing these devices en masse.

This column could easily take another shot at the great aspects of these technologies, as well as the spectacularly poorly handled execution of some. It will not. The tech trend to point out here is this: what are end-users actually buying? It is not just the technology or even the brand. They are buying peace of mind.

At the heart of every technology decision is data, privacy, and trust. The current issues – and the collateral damage rippling through the end-user community – are a direct reflection that trust has been broken. Data that was supposed to be private is not. The end-user feels betrayed.

The reality is that a majority of the technologies developed by the security industry are secure by design. Manufacturers follow industry best practices. The sins of a few have affected the many.

Collateral damage has hit everyone. And those sins are now forcing the security industry as a whole to become more secure, more transparent, more truthful.

The Catalyst

The perception has been that individual data – protected by technology safeguards and company processes – was openly abused. The reality is that for some data, this did actually happen, but not en masse. That perception, however, has allowed others to jump on the bandwagon of visceral betrayal.

This has happened multiple times with biometrics, as each year more states create privacy laws, often modeled on the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) of 2008. Simply put, businesses can capture biometric data with user consent, but they must handle it – and delete it – correctly and within specific timeframes. Failure to do so is costly. As of this writing, more than $7 billion globally has been generated by biometric privacy settlements alone.

Doug OGorden, Founder at Aid2entry and A&E Consultant Sales Advisor for Johnson Controls, says: "Just like BIPA and biometrics, the dispute we are having with ALPR today is that the technology itself isn't necessarily the problem. It is how it's being implemented and/or used. Any technology that is created can be used for good or evil. The question now is whether we establish the right guidelines, guardrails, and expectations around the technology before it becomes the problem."

As ALPR is the newest technology to reach the legal scene, financial penalties have been limited. The relief most widely sought is injunctive – forcing end-users to remove cameras, destroy data, and implement stronger controls before data can be accessed.

The Result

Trust, once broken, is hard to rebuild. People buy technology because they have been sold on trust: that it will do what it is sold to do, and that safeguards are in place to prevent hacking and data misuse.

Time and again, however, the security industry has been plagued by brands that erode that trust and cause mass collateral damage. Camera manufacturers still stress NDAA/TAA compliance nearly a decade after the initial ban because the lost trust still lingers.

The Recovery

The damage is done; now comes the recovery. This is a forced tech trend for everyone in the security industry, and we will all play a part whether we want to or not.

Much like the NDAA/TAA debacle, we have to educate our clients on the technologies. We have to partner with companies that have gone the extra mile to be secure by design – those that have built trust and continue to build it. We have to be trustworthy partners to the end-user community ourselves. And we are all now being thrust into helping end-users ensure they have the policies and processes in place to keep private data private.

As the quote goes: "This too shall pass. It might pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass." Until the next one. That's where we, as a security industry, need to do better.