Solving Response With Agentic AI

Across the industry, security devices have scaled faster than the teams tasked with managing them. While we have more surveillance cameras installed than ever before, most of these systems aren’t monitored, making incident review the default position for many organizations.

This creates a vicious cycle: review the footage, attempt to understand what happened and figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

Most artificial intelligence (AI) solutions promise better analytics, filtering or streamlined alert management. While these tools add value, they still depend on human review to verify and act. The result is a smarter queue, not a faster response.

According to a recent Security Industry Association (SIA)-ASIS International report, the global physical security industry is projected to reach a staggering $500 billion in combined equipment and services by 2026; however, most infrastructure remains reactive, not for lack of investment, but because the ability to deliver real-time monitoring at scale simply didn’t exist until now.

Historically, remote monitoring has followed a sequential model. Alerts are generated, queued and reviewed one at a time. An operator, often juggling dozens or even hundreds of feeds, verifies the threat, issues a voice-down, checks standard operating procedures then begins escalation: calling security personnel, property managers and even law enforcement. This process takes time and limits the number of devices being monitored.

Agentic AI changes that. For the first time, we can extend real-time monitoring and response to every device, not just top-priority sites or locations.

From AI Enhanced to AI Engaged

Agentic AI is different from other AI analytics and global security operations center-monitoring solutions. It detects, verifies and responds autonomously to incidents in real time. There’s no queue. Instead, it engages in the moment. This removes the bottleneck that has slowed response for years.

Here’s a typical scenario: A camera analytic alerts on a possible perimeter intrusion at night. Agentic AI verifies the event and immediately takes multiple actions in parallel. A human-like voice-down message warns the intruder through an IP horn. At the same time, designated stakeholders are notified based on the site’s procedures.

Agentic AI continues to engage appropriately, delivering up-to-the-minute updates on the unfolding incident. This improves coordination between responders, ensuring everyone involved has the same real-time information. The system clearly and calmly describes scenes, locations and other vital details.

The compliance benefits are equally important. Every action is automatically logged, creating a complete after-incident report with video, audio, metadata and time stamps. This level of detail and consistency is impossible for humans to maintain manually.

From Operator to Conductor

With Agentic AI handling routine detection and response, operators become conductors, directing larger, more complex security operations with the help of autonomous systems. Human oversight shifts to higher-value work – strategic decisions, case review and managing relationships across sites and stakeholders. One operator can now manage what used to require a full team, spanning cameras, access control, communications, and beyond.

This is how the industry upskills the workforce, by shifting people away from repetitive tasks they weren’t built for and into more rewarding roles that leverage their judgment, experience and oversight.

The future of security isn’t about building a faster queue: it’s about replacing the queue entirely, with an autonomous response system that acts the moment a threat emerges.

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association.

This article originally appeared in All Things AI, a newsletter presented by the SIA AI Advisory Board.