ISC West 2025 Perimeter Roundup: Five Takeaways for PIDS Buyers
ISC West 2025 drew nearly 30,000 industry professionals and 750 exhibiting brands to the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas (March 31–April 4). For perimeter intrusion detection, the show offered a clear reading of where vendor investment and buyer interest are heading. Here are five takeaways.
1. Fiber Optic DAS Has Arrived as a Mainstream Modality
Two years ago, Distributed Acoustic Sensing was a niche technology discussed primarily in the context of border and pipeline protection. At ISC West 2025, DAS had its own momentum. Sintela launched Onyx with 3-metre localisation on standard telecom fiber. OPTEX and Fiber SenSys promoted EchoPoint following their Intersec Dubai award. Gato Security pushed a 120 km range claim.
The message from the show floor: DAS is no longer an exotic technology for extreme-length perimeters only. Vendors are now targeting mainstream critical infrastructure — energy facilities, data centres, and military installations — with products designed for 1–10 km perimeters where DAS competes directly with fence-mounted sensors on total cost of ownership.
2. AI Edge Analytics Are Table Stakes
Every major perimeter vendor at the show incorporated AI-based classification into their pitch. Bosch demonstrated IVA Pro detecting crawling and camouflaged intruders. SightLogix promoted dual-spectrum thermal-visible AI correlation. Verkada announced AI fence-climbing detection. Johnson Controls showed integrated analytics across their DSC intrusion, Exacq VMS, and Illustra camera platforms.
The competitive differentiator is no longer whether a system has AI, but how the AI performs in the specific environmental conditions of a given site — rain, fog, wind, vegetation, wildlife, and adjacent human activity that generate the nuisance alarms perimeter operators care most about reducing.
3. The Corrections Market Is Getting Dedicated Attention
Southwest Microwave's MicroNet II launch for correctional facilities was the most focused vertical announcement at the show. Prisons and detention centres present some of the hardest PIDS environments: high-activity fence lines, institutional vibration, and zero-tolerance detection mandates. Products tuned specifically for this environment — rather than adapted from commercial or military specifications — suggest vendors see a procurement cycle worth investing in.
The US corrections PIDS market is driven by aging infrastructure, federal standards compliance (ASIS/ANSI), and state-level capital investment in facility modernisation.
4. LiDAR Is Expanding Beyond Access Points
LiDAR sensors at ISC West were positioned for broader perimeter applications, not just doorway or access-point monitoring. OPTEX's REDSCAN Pro covers 100 metres per sensor. Ouster's Gemini platform integrates with Genetec for site-wide 3D detection. Blickfeld's QbProtect (soon to be part of Senstar's portfolio) targets perimeter zones where camera-based detection is impractical.
At current pricing, LiDAR remains more expensive per sensor than most alternatives. But the cost trajectory — driven by automotive LiDAR manufacturing scale — is favourable, and the 3D classification accuracy (distinguishing a person from an animal or debris) is superior to any camera-based analytic.
5. Integration Platforms Are the Real Product
The most consistent theme across the show was not any single sensor or detection modality, but the platform layer that ties them together. Johnson Controls demonstrated an end-to-end Kantech + Exacq + DSC + Illustra stack. Genetec showed unified command and control across video, access, and intrusion. Axis promoted radar-video fusion with AI analytics.
For PIDS buyers, this signals a market shift: the value proposition is moving from the detection hardware to the software layer that correlates multi-sensor alerts, reduces operator workload, and provides actionable situational awareness. Vendors who sell sensors without an integration story are increasingly at a disadvantage.