In this featured piece by Security Guys News, Terry Swanson, president and CEO of Singlewire Software, offers expert commentary on how security teams can use AI and automation to move faster without handing over the decisions that matter most. He argues that the smartest approach automates everything around a human decision — pulling signals from sensors, cameras, and access control into a single view beforehand, and delivering notifications and coordinating response immediately after — while keeping the consequential, hard-to-reverse call with an accountable person. The article frames this against a real problem for security operations: the vast majority of alarms turn out to be false, so teams need faster, smarter filtering without losing the human judgment that prevents costly mistakes.
Key Takeaways
- Automation should speed up detection and response, not replace human judgment: the goal is to automate every step around the decision so the person in charge can act quickly and confidently.
- Upstream, the value is consolidation: pulling signals from sensors, cameras, access control, and other systems into a single view means no one has to assemble the picture under pressure, getting the right information to a decision-maker as fast as possible.
- Downstream, speed comes from preparation: once a decision is made, pre-built emergency action plans, workflows, device mapping, and notification paths carry it out immediately, from notifying everyone to locking down a building and coordinating response.
- The line for human oversight is set by reversibility and cost: low-consequence, reversible steps like sharing a panic button’s location or surfacing a camera feed can be automated safely, while irreversible actions like a lockdown, dispatching police, or a mass evacuation need a person with the authority and accountability to make the call.
- Alarm fatigue is its own safety failure: because false positives are common, a fully automated response would risk unnecessary lockdowns and erode trust, and a system people learn to second-guess protects no one, no matter how fast it runs.
Original Story
The operational calculation matters because automated deterrence measures carry immediate costs when triggered incorrectly, while hesitation creates security gaps. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 94 to 98 percent of alarm calls turn out to be false, a reality that drives security teams to seek smarter filtering systems without sacrificing response speed.
Terry Swanson, President and CEO at Singlewire Software, said in written responses to Security Guys News that the tradeoff is managed by designing solutions that keep a human in the loop while setting up automation on either side to increase speed while still validating information to minimize false positives. “Everything upstream — the tools detecting a threat — needs to get the right information into a decision-maker’s hands as fast as possible. That means consolidating signals from sensors, cameras, access control, and other systems into a single view, so nobody has to assemble the picture themselves under pressure. Everything downstream — the tools delivering the information to everyone else — is about acting on the decision immediately once it’s made: notifying everyone, locking down a building, and coordinating a response. All of that runs on executing pre-configured emergency action plans, workflows, device mapping, and notification paths. The judgment call ends up being the only step that isn’t automated, and because of all that preparation, it’s a short one.”