UK & Ireland lead AI adoption in physical security

Verkada has published research showing that 49% of organisations in the UK and Ireland are actively using AI in physical security systems, the highest level among the five European countries surveyed.

The findings suggest adoption is advancing faster than governance. While 86% of respondents said AI would shift physical security from a mainly reactive model to a proactive one within three years, only 37% said they had a comprehensive AI governance policy covering physical security.

Another 40% said they had general AI guidelines that were not specific to physical security, while 16% were still developing a governance framework. The report also found that many organisations have yet to put formal measures in place to assess returns from AI spending in this area.

Just 34% said they had formal metrics and a quantified return on investment for AI in physical security. A further 46% said they tracked some metrics informally, and 15% had not attempted to measure return on investment at all.

Operational use

Among organisations in the UK and Ireland already using or piloting AI, the most common applications were AI-verified alarm monitoring at 52%, real-time motion, loitering or line-crossing alerts at 47%, and AI-generated incident reports at 44%. Facial recognition and automated voice warnings each stood at 43%.

Respondents also linked AI use to practical changes in day-to-day security work. Some 58% said AI had delivered, or was expected to deliver, faster incident investigations, while 56% pointed to improved real-time threat detection.

Other reported or expected benefits included proactive crime prevention for 40% of respondents, fewer false alarms for 39%, and lower overall security operating costs for 36%. The figures suggest buyers are using AI not just for monitoring, but increasingly for staffing, workflows and cost control.

The study found mixed effects on employment. Seventeen per cent said AI had no impact on staffing, while 19% said headcount had stayed the same but roles had shifted towards more analysis and less manual review. Another 22% said the same number of people had become more effective.

There were also signs of diverging hiring plans. Seventeen per cent said headcount had increased to manage AI systems, compared with 19% who said headcount had fallen through AI-related efficiencies.

Regulatory pressure

Regulation appears to be shaping purchasing decisions across the market. Some 82% of respondents in the UK and Ireland said government regulation around AI had a significant or moderate influence on physical security buying decisions.

That influence was most visible in the treatment of biometric tools. Some 42% said they had restricted or avoided facial recognition because of regulatory or legal concerns, while 41% said the same for real-time biometric identification. A further 30% said they had restricted or avoided automated decision-making without human review.

Only 21% said regulation had not restricted their AI adoption. At the same time, respondents placed heavy emphasis on how suppliers explain their systems and demonstrate compliance.

According to the findings, 97% said transparency about how a physical security vendor's AI models work was extremely or very important, and 49% said they treated this as a purchasing requirement. Meanwhile, 94% said compliance with relevant international regulations and standards was extremely or very important when evaluating vendors, with 52% describing it as a hard requirement.

Cloud shift

The research also points to continued movement towards cloud-managed physical security infrastructure. In the UK and Ireland, 22% of organisations said they now operate fully cloud-managed physical security systems, while 70% use a mix of cloud-managed and on-premise technology.

Only 8% said they remain fully on-premise. Among organisations that are not yet fully cloud-managed, 92% said they were planning or already carrying out a partial or full transition.

Confidence in that direction was strong. Nine in ten respondents agreed that the future of physical security is cloud-based, while 94% said cloud systems make it easier to manage security across multiple sites.

Budget expectations also point to further spending in the sector. Some 77% of respondents expected their physical security budgets to increase over the next 12 months, including 23% who expected rises of at least 20%.

When asked for their single top investment priority, 32% chose cloud storage and infrastructure, 30% chose cybersecurity, and 22% chose AI analytics and video intelligence. The survey was conducted by Dynata on behalf of Verkada and covered 2,741 IT and physical security leaders worldwide, including 203 in the UK and Ireland.

"AI in physical security is no longer a future consideration for organisations in the UK and Ireland. Nearly half are already actively using it, and businesses are seeing the potential to detect threats faster, accelerate investigations and make security teams more effective. What stands out in the data, and is also reflected in conversations with organisations across the UK and Ireland, is that AI embedded within security infrastructure is now delivering practical operational benefits," said Mark Coates, Vice President of EMEA at Verkada.