Tom Cook, Executive Vice President of Sales, Marketing & Operations, North America at Hanwha Vision America tells SJA about the company’s future direction.

The surveillance market

According to Cook, 2025 will be a very positive year for the surveillance market in North America.

“We’re going to see better growth in 2025 than we did in 2024,” he said, highlighting that the economy usually slows in presidential election years.

“However, with interest rates dropping in the US at the end of December, I don’t think we’ll be seeing a recession soon.

“So, we have a positive outlook for 2025, especially for the second half to close the year on a strong note.”

Cook predicted that throughout the rest of 2025, the fastest-growing segment for surveillance will be within cities and municipalities, to enhance traffic safety.

He emphasized, though, that the largest industry which will continue to dominate surveillance is the K-12 education market: “K-12 will continue to see 8 to 10% growth, although city surveillance will probably see about 14% overall growth this year.”

One key factor that Cook mentioned is driving the surveillance market is AI.

“People want to upgrade their existing systems. They want to enhance what they have, for operational purposes using AI not just for security,” he said.

The evolution of technology

Cook continued that he expects AI to be improved every year.

Within Hanwha Vision America, he drew attention to its R&D efforts, highlighting how the company keeps its end users in mind when developing products.

“We’re having conversations with our end users every day about how their smart systems can help them in their roles,” he said.

“There’s a lot of pressure on security departments to become more than just a cost center, but support other departments too.”

He commented that through the use of AI, security departments can manage how many trucks are coming into a compound, or they can identify slip and falls in retail centers, which can help to prevent liability lawsuits.

K-12 institutions can even use AI in surveillance cameras to detect whether there is any snow or ice on the ground that must be addressed before children arrive, to enhance their safety.

“A lot of end users are asking how they can use AI, but they don’t have cameras at the moment that can support AI,” Cook revealed.

“However, there are alternatives. Whether it’s AI on servers or AI added to video management system (VMS) software packages, there’s always a way to use this technology. Of course, another option is to use edge analytics.”

Cook also highlighted the cloud as another technology which has grown dramatically in recent years.

He said that one of the major reasons this innovation has been utilized is due to the COVID pandemic.

When people were working remotely, they needed a tool that still enabled them to check on the security of their organization, which on-premise systems would not allow to a sufficient standard.

“There was an immediate need during this time for access to security systems without physically being on premises,” Cook said.

“While mobile apps were available, they were stripped down versions of the normal software.

“Instead, the cloud can provide a unified approach to drive and control an entire program, no matter where you are.”

Cook did note, however, that there is currently some concern surrounding the cloud for a few sectors.

For example, the banking sector will be unlikely to adopt this technology because financial institutions won’t put their security devices on a public cloud.

They may instead build their own private cloud that has its own data center, but this can be very costly.

As a result of this hesitancy from some sectors, Cook said, there have been a lot of requests for hybrid cloud solutions, where only certain parts of the system are hosted on the cloud.

Other trends

One of the other market drivers that Cook highlighted is the Internet of Things (IoT). “We’ve talked about IoT devices for 20 years.

“While the security industry can be slow to change, the embracing of IoT will see video, alarm companies or card access companies having to monitor multiple types of devices – or at least support them,” he said.

“The industry is finally migrating toward one solution that can monitor many systems at once.”

The other prediction Cook made was the alarm business being disrupted by video with AI.

If an alarm is set to go off when opened between 11pm and 7am, a camera with AI can send the same message while also doing the job of capturing an image of the intruder.

“We’re seeing companies ask if they even need their alarm systems anymore, and the answer is probably not,” Cook remarked.

A journey in security

Speaking on a more personal level, Cook noted that he began his career in electrical engineering.

“I loved electronics when I was younger and wanted to be an electrician,” he said.

“My father pushed me toward college but I didn’t want to go, so after two years, I said I’ve got to go to work!”

In the end, he was offered an internship that allowed him to stay in college but also work at the same time.

Joining a company called Mosler, a provider of safes and deposit boxes, Cook began working in its commercial electronics division.

“I embraced writing software and developing hardware,” he said.

“From there, I got into alarm monitoring and card access, building up a career that way.

“Then a friend who worked at Mosler went over to Panasonic and asked me to come over there. I absolutely refused – I thought video was the most boring thing in the world and there was nothing to it!”

Eventually though, Cook was persuaded to make the move to Panasonic and leave card access behind.

After spending ten years there, he had the opportunity to move to Vicon and build the company up.

After working on a partnership with Samsung, Cook had the opportunity to meet with their team and has now been with the company that has become Hanwha Vision for 13 years.

“I’ve worked for four companies, and I’ve had four great experiences of growing each successfully, being lucky enough to have a lot of supportive people around me that believe in my ideas,” he said.

“They’ve allowed me to make decisions that I think will benefit the organization, but Hanwha Vision goes beyond that.

“They ask the question: what’s it going to take to be number one? What’s it going to take to grow 40% a year? Not 5%, not 10%.”

Cook noted that although this might sound daunting, if given the tools and resources to execute a job properly, then anything is possible.

Hanwha Vision at ISC West

Commenting on the company’s attendance at ISC West 2025, Cook said that Hanwha Vision is introducing a new camera line that will replace its Wisenet 7 with a Wisenet 9 chipset.

“All the cameras will have the Wisenet 9 chip in them. It’s bigger and better than anything we’ve ever done,” said Cook.

“We’re very proud of what it’s going to do.” Some of these features, he noted, are better compression, enhanced lower light performance, more AI analytics power and improved cybersecurity.

Another solution that Cook noted will be at the show is a multi-sensor camera with an NVIDIA Jetson GPU built into it.

He explained that this allows almost any AI company to put their software on a Hanwha Vision camera.

“It doesn’t matter if we have a Wisenet 9 chipset, as the GPU will drive the AI, meaning the Jetson GPU essentially allows the product to be open platform,” Cook revealed.

He added that Hanwha Vision cameras currently operate at 2.5 tera operations per second (TOPS), the Wisenet 9 cameras will be at 4 TOPS, but the multi-sensor camera with Nvidia Jetson GPU will be at 100 TOPS.

“It’s stronger than anything in our marketplace today,” Cook said. “All the databasing and calculating that AI can do on severs can be done on this camera.

“There’s no bandwidth consumption, because there’s no server. We have solid state storage devices on the camera and it can process tremendous amounts of power. That’s huge.”

The overall goal

Thinking ahead to the future, Cook commented that he believes Hanwha Vision has a bright outlook.

“Our vision is to continue to become number one,” said Cook. “We want to grow Hanwha Vision over the next four to five years and literally double sales.”

Our product roadmap over the next couple of years is expanded dramatically and we will start seeing our investments in the marketplace starting at ISC West but with so much more to come in 2025 to help meet these lofty goals.”

He said that to ensure this is the company’s future, there must be a lot of investment.

Having become a public company and spinning off from Hanwha Aerospace in September 2024 means there are now different pressures upon the organization, but its direction and management remain the same.

“Overall, we want to expand our offerings beyond security. We will continue to enhance our security cameras and solutions, but we will grow our business,” Cook commented.

“In the near future, we’ll show the industry that Hanwha Vision is a manufacturer for all needs, for any customer in the marketplace.”

This article was originally published in the special ISC West 2025 March edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.