SIA New Member Profile: Hakimo

New Security Industry Association (SIA) member Hakimo is a technology company that integrates into physical security programs to improve the efficiency of access control monitoring and reduce the operating cost of expensive security command centers. Hakimo is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

SIA spoke with Sam Joseph, co-founder and CEO of Hakimo, about the company, the security industry and working with SIA.

Tell us the story of your company.

Sam Joseph: Prior to starting Hakimo, I was an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher at Stanford University, and I have always been fascinated by how technology and startups could impact the world. During that time, my co-founder Sagar and I noticed some interesting trends: the quality of cameras increasing substantially, their costs coming down and, of course, the rapid advancement of AI algorithms. It was clear to me that there would be something magical at the intersection of all three, especially in the security industry, which is the place where most of the cameras end up. After visiting multiple global security operations centers (GSOCs) and talking to numerous industry professionals, it was obvious that something like Hakimo is clearly needed in the market, which led me to pause my research at Stanford and start Hakimo.

What solutions/services does your business offer in the security industry? And what makes your offerings/company unique?

SJ: Hakimo’s product is like an AI operator for your GSOC or monitoring center. Hakimo’s AI engine takes care of all the repetitive tasks, such as clearing false alarms and monitoring cameras, thereby enabling your human operators to focus on things that matter, such as responding to incidents, travel risk management and emergency response. Hakimo’s product is truly novel and uses state-of-the-art AI techniques. In fact, what Hakimo is doing today was not technologically possible five years ago, which puts us in a unique position in the market, and we are poised to significantly alter how GSOCs are operated in the coming years. And we’re already seeing tremendous gains in productivity and operator satisfaction at our current deployments.

What is something we might not know about your company – or something new you are doing in security?

SJ: Hakimo has reduced false alarms by more than 80% at customer sites on which we are presently deployed. As I mentioned earlier, this level of reduction is something that many in the industry still assume is impossible. We are proud to have accomplished this feat!

What is your company’s vision, and what are your goals for the security industry?

SJ: Our vision is to bring cybersecurity-like tools to the physical security industry and accelerate the convergence between the two.

What do you think are the biggest opportunities in the security industry right now?

SJ: Data. All security sensors (including cameras) and applications generate so much data. Security is all about correlating non-obvious data sources to generate actionable insights, and AI is the enabler to achieve that. For example, one of the use cases of Hakimo is to correlate data from badge readers with the corresponding camera footage and then use AI on top of that data to detect tailgating or piggybacking. (Tailgating or piggybacking is the phenomenon where one person who badges in to a door lets another person in without having the second person present their badge.)   

What are your predictions for the security industry in the short and long term?

SJ: In the short term, I believe there will be a clear separation between security teams that adopt modern, AI-driven platforms like Hakimo and those who don’t. The cost of labor is increasing steadily, and companies that don’t adopt Hakimo-like solutions won’t be able to keep up with increasing costs and hence won’t be able to survive. In the long term, this would lead to a situation where it is practically impossible to run a GSOC without a tool like Hakimo.    

What are the biggest challenges facing your company and/or others in the security industry?

SJ: Currently, it is the false premise that physical security has become less important during COVID because of the reduced number of people in a typical office; however, crime rates and insider threat risks have been steadily increasing. In addition, we may soon have a situation where employees don’t know their colleagues, and the risks from tailgating will increase exponentially as a result. Physical security is thus all the more important in today’s changing threat landscape.

What do you enjoy most about being at your company – and in the security industry?

SJ: Leading a group of stellar and awesome people who are THE best in their fields and learning from them.    

What does SIA offer that is most important to you/your company? And what do you most hope to get out of your membership with SIA?

SJ: The opportunity to easily connect with the industry. Recognitions like the SIA New Product Showcase at ISC West have been extremely helpful for us.

What does your organization engage with SIA? What are your plans for involvement in the next year?

SJ: Primarily through events such as ISC West, SIAThere! and AcceleRISE. We are big fans of ISC West and had a booth there this year, and we plan to continue that in the upcoming years as well. 

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.