As I mentioned in my last blog, the RSA show in San Francisco highlighted some interesting trends. It seems that more enterprises are realizing that the lines between physical and logical security are blurring, especially in terms of risk management.
Last September, ASIS International, an association of physical security professionals, and the ISC, the international systems security consortium, held their annual meetings together for the first time. This is important because a recent poll conducted by these two groups showed that half of over 1800 respondents said they do not have a definitive enterprise-wide view of risk.
While this used to be difficult to achieve, Gartner recently reported that solutions now exist that make the integration of physical access control systems (like badge readers and logical controls such as Active Directory provisions) much more seamless. Gartner has termed this sector Physical Identity and Access Management, or PIAM.
My prediction is that while turf wars will continue between these two security areas, you will see a number of major enterprises broaden their view of risk and combine them into one.