A year of great expectations and promise

Dec 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Paul Caplan

What a year! As we close the book on the first year of the new millennium (depending on your definition of exactly when the 21st century begins), what have we seen?

- a Y2K problem that was no problem;

- a dot-com revolution that has stalled into, perhaps, evolution;

- an Olympics robbed of drama by a tape-delay strategy;

- a promised new political mandate that is anything but a mandate.

In short, you can view the year 2000 as a year when big expectations came up short. The security industry, however, delivered on a number of promises - a multitude of new product offerings on the market this year, new businesses created, and mergers of established companies.

It's a dynamic industry. Technologies have expanded capabilities to new levels, and we are now seeing growth in the protection of corporate assets and in the role of the security professional. Moving into 2001, there appears to be little slowdown in these trends.

On the cover this month, we offer an analysis of security trends at Fortune 1000 companies, the top companies in the United States. In "How do you measure up to the Fortune 1000?" our own Jan Rabinowitz, planning and research manager at Intertec Publishing, hits some highlights from our most recent reader survey covering trends in systems integration and spending priorities. If you want more information on Fortune 1000 security trends, look for our year-end Best of the Best special issue, which you will receive later this month. Our other front page stories look at the security operations at a resort hotel chain in the land of Mickey Mouse, and at a historic state university.

Other high-profile and idiosyncratic security operations are reviewed in this issue as well. Veteran writer Don Garbera checks into the New Yorker, a storied Manhattan hotel that is making a phoenix-like resurrection in midtown. This art deco gem is implementing security systems and requirements to meet the challenges of a new era.

Biometrics has matured from gadget and gizmos to front-line importance in today's high-end security systems. Check out "Security is in the eye of the beholder at Affinity Internet" in which assistant editor Jeanne Bonner takes a "look" at how this rapidly expanding Internet company is incorporating iris-identification technologies into its organization.

For an end-of-the-year look back and a look forward, we turn to our CCTV guru, Charlie Pierce. This month, he takes you on a five-year review of technology advances in CCTV and predicts what to expect in the next five years.

It has been a tremendous year for all of us on the staff of Access Control & Security Systems Integration and Seguridad Latina, our foreign-language sister publication. We expanded our circulation to include even more security professionals and decision-makers. We won a total of five awards for editorial content and design, and we launched a new regular supplement, iSecurity, covering the integration of physical and logical security systems.

We appreciate your trust in making us a primary source for security information. Here's wishing you a joyous holiday season and a healthy, prosperous 2001!

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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

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