AI in Data Center Physical Security: Questions to Ask Technology Providers

By Peter Jafuta, Motorola Solutions on March 13, 2026 |

Every second matters when it comes to data center security.

Peter Jafuta headshot
Peter Jafuta is a strategic executive focusing on helping customers achieve their security objectives through integrated data center security technology, including radio, video security, access control and data analytics. He serves as senior data center account executive at Motorola Solutions.

Over the past few years, artificial intelligence-powered technologies have empowered security personnel by analyzing large volumes of data and distilling it into actionable insights, thereby enabling them to reclaim valuable time to take action.

By directing security teams’ focus toward genuine threats, AI boosts efficiency, which, in turn, facilitates faster and more decisive responses to events, helping secure the data center and maintain reliable operations.

Agentic AI represents an exciting evolution for enhanced situational awareness and faster response times. For data centers, it can help automate standard operating procedures (SOPs) with minimal supervision, which ensures SOPs are consistently applied.

The automation of SOPs using AI also reduces the impact of a common industry challenge—high-security staff turnover—and simplifies the onboarding of new hires while maintaining a robust security posture.

While this may be one use case for AI, several other potential use cases can help you implement a multilayered approach to data center security. As new AI-powered technologies flood the market, it can be a challenge to identify the right AI-powered security solution for your data center.

The checklist here simplifies this process: It provides you with key questions to ask technology providers, helping ensure you collect the necessary information to implement the right solution.

Seven key questions to ask technology providers

  1. What is the purpose of AI in the security solution? Is it to detect activity that could represent a security threat, e.g., a facility breach, or to minimize false positives and reduce incident response times?
  2. Are your AI models trained with customer data? This identifies the approach the technology provider has taken with their AI models. If customer data is used, how is it secured, and is there an option to opt out?
  3. Do you own the AI models or do you use open-source models? Whether the technology provider owns the AI models or uses open-source models could impact your security operations, costs, flexibility and long-term scalability.
  4. Does your AI-powered security solution use generative AI? This will help highlight the solution’s capabilities for various applications and potential limitations.
  5. Can your AI models process video, audio and text? This informs you of the media types the AI models can process and/or generate.
  6. Who controls the data processed by the AI models? Are you the data controller or the technology provider, or is it a shared responsibility?
  7. Who sets the AI data retention policy? If this is your responsibility, be aware of the applicable regulatory frameworks and industry guidelines.

Transparency in AI matters

As AI-powered security solutions become increasingly mainstream, these questions will be vital in creating greater transparency when data centers compare solutions.Transparency builds trust and ensures data center security operators can confidently select solutions that align with their operational needs, compliance obligations and ethical standards.

One way technology providers can contribute to greater transparency is through effective communication that cuts through the noise. For example, using Motorola Solutions’ AI labels, providers can help customers better understand the type of AI used, who owns the processed data, the human controls in place and the purpose behind the product’s specific application of AI.

The integration of AI into physical security is ushering in a transformative era for data center operations. By augmenting human focus and performance, AI empowers security teams to handle complexity with unprecedented speed and precision. Exciting times lie ahead as data centers leverage these cutting-edge capabilities to achieve new levels of efficiency and protection.

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.