Survey Stats on Convergence

Security Magazine recently released convergence survey results from large scale security departments. Here are some interesting aspects:

• 70% of security departments said they used proprietary security management systems. I am not sure what this means because basically every security system is proprietary at the application level (manufacturers may have 'open' APIs but they are all proprietary implementations with no standards to define interoperability).
• 29% reported that their Building Automation System was integrated with their security system. This sounds high but the average revenue level of the respondents was $1 Billion USD so this likely reflects the minority of very large companies rather than companies in general. 
• Only 10% said their relationship with IT was difficult. 88% said it was cooperative or highly productive.
• Only 16% of security departments said that they had a higher rank than IT in their companies. This is not surprising. On the other hand, I think video surveillance companies misread this into thinking that IT will, therefore, make physical security decisions. (See our debate about IT in physical security).