Episode 34 – Transforming Physical Security: The Interoperability Advantage

Welcome to Executive Checkpoint, the live podcast for security professionals. Each week, we explore industry trends, challenges, and insights with leading experts. This is your insider access to the minds driving change in our industry.

Welcome to Executive Checkpoint, where security professionals gain insight into the ever-changing world of physical and cybersecurity. I'm your host, Tino Urbina, and today I have the great pleasure to have with me Leo Levitt. He's the chairman of ONVIF, the global standard for network video and access control. However, Leo's work— Leo's work is about more than standards. It's about unifying a fragmented industry through collaboration and foresight. In this episode, we explore the mindset behind standard setting, the power of consensus, and what it takes to lead through change. Leo, I'm so glad that you're able to join us. Where are you currently today?

Today I'm in Sweden, so it's already darker outside. So I'm in a cold northern country today.

There you go. So good evening to you. We're in— I'm in Houston in the US, so it's morning time and We'll get some of that weather, Leo, in the next coming days. Uh, we're supposed to have some snow, which rare to happen in Texas, but here you are. Crazy world. Leo, uh, glad to have you. Um, you know, like you and I were chatting before we, we jump in the podcast, you have a great, interesting background. Most people know you from your professional side and whatnot. Tell us a little bit about your, your, your, uh, where you grow up, where you come from and eventually how you maneuvered to be in the security industry. Let's start with that. Why not?

So here we are starting the couple of hours long story, but I'll try to condense it a bit. I was born and grown up in Russia, just a small suburb of Moscow, and was living there until I graduated from university. So my background is electronic engineering, so I'm an engineer in the background. And this actually kind of encapsulates my curiosity for the technical challenges. And shortly after I graduated, I moved to Sweden and started to work at Ericsson, which is probably one of the biggest technological companies in Sweden at that time. So this is where my real engineering career started, almost 30 years ago, actually.

Well, you look great for a 30-year career, sir. So when you reflect on your earlier years, what moments, you know, of value do you feel shape your philosophy today?

Um, I mean, we, uh, as human beings, uh, never stop learning. I mean, if at any, any given point in time you feel that, uh, I have experience and that's it, I'm gonna base my decision based on that, it's never gonna change, you're probably wrong. So I think one of the biggest insights I gained during my early time in, in the professional work, in professional career, It's that never stop learning. The world is changing so quickly you cannot comprehend it really. And you should be open to change your decisions, to change your viewpoints when you learn more about the actual challenges or life or conditions out there. So never stop learning and be curious. This is something that I got very early through in my career. And at the moments where you feel that you're an expert and you can master a challenge, and all of a sudden an additional insight coming into play, and suddenly you realize that, oh well, actually my opinion was wrong and I need to change it. I need to, you know, create a new one adapted based on the new information. That's, that's pretty very interesting, uh, experience.

You know, I think, I think you make a great point. It, our industry specifically, but many industries have to deal now with the fast path and moving target that is technology, and that's all we deal with. And we're in an industry that is already very complex, and you guys deal with some of the most complex portions of the industry. Was there a moment in your path to leadership that you doubted a little bit that this was the correct industry, or have you always been passionate about the security and in this case video?

Well, to be very honest with you, I wasn't, very involved with the security industry until I joined Axis Communications some years back. Up until that point of time, the majority of my career was within telecommunication.

I see.

From different domains, both from system part of that with the massive network deployments, you know, multinational companies and multinational networks, uh, and also within mobile device industry. Uh, so security came on top of that. And actually, it's a perfect combination because, uh, when you work with any type of technological development, security comes very natural. Uh, and when I entered and started working at Axis Communications some time ago, This is where it actually all came together. All the knowledge about communication protocols, use of data, how do you transmit video from one endpoint to another? All of that technological knowledge came very handy to be applied within the security industry. And on top of that, it's also very interesting to see the dynamics from the business side because we was— I was used to, to work with the, uh, first, you know, big, uh, enterprise network solutions, uh, very slow moving to the market. And then I moved to a more consumer-faced area, and this is extremely fast-moving market. And after that, entering security business, uh, I see that from the technology point of view, we're very eager to develop the industry, but it's still quite conservative when it comes to ways of working, setup. And it's great to see and bring all those knowledge to the security industry from the previous experiences.

I think that's a great point. I feel that communications gain that unifying point when they used to be all silos, right? And now the market dictated to come in. And I think we're going through the same thing in security, slow moving, but we're slowly getting there. I think communications did it earlier, earlier on. Now, ONVIT plays such a foundational role in the industry now, but it was like stepping into— what was stepping into that new role with ONVIT? What pressures came with leading a global standard organization?

Well, that's a very interesting question. OMV is a unique set of mentalities. Let us put it this way. Fundamentally, to lead this organization means that we create an environment where different companies that in a lot of cases competitors to each other—

Sure.

Need to collaborate across company borders, cultural borders, geographical borders, uh, in order to create, um, solutions that develop the industry as a whole. Uh, and again, every time we, we have discussions with the, this organization, I, I need to keep the idea of collaboration as a highest priority and motivate collaboration across the organization and different parts of the organization and different committees and different working groups. And always remind our members that, yeah, we're coming from different companies and we compete on the market, but we are here together in order to grow our industry for the greater good of our companies as well.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. To me, you know, to your point, interoperability is often seen as a technical checkbox, but the reality is a strategic choice that can define how scalable, secure, and future-proof your systems really can be. From your perspective, what does interoperability really mean for the future of the security industry, and what are the biggest challenges in making a global standard, not just a technical spec?

So, uh, global standard is a good standard when it's been adopted, when people actually using it. We have a lot of different standards, and, um, some of them are very good from technical standpoint, but still not been adopted on the market. And One of the biggest things that standardization organizations, any standardization organization, need to think about is what problem they're trying to solve, whose life they try to make easier. And this is, I think, something that we encourage our members to think about when they're discussing different technical solutions, to focus on the real problem, whose problem we're solving and why it's important. If we look at the purpose or the meaning of interoperability for security industry, I think it's an instrumental part of the future of the industry. And as we go more and more towards integrated systems that share data across different use cases, across different, even legal entities, Sure. it's extremely important to be able to utilize this data across different systems. And if those systems cannot talk to each other, I mean, this technological investment you've made in your system, it's isolated to what you can solve today. But well, it's probably not gonna work tomorrow when your needs are changing or your data is changing, or, you know, you want to integrate it to something else for, you know, evolved business objectives of your enterprise. So I think it's super important to keep that in mind. And you articulated it very well, that it's a way for us to help end customers to secure their investments for the future. It's also help for system integrators to be able to build the system based on the components that we know can talk to each other. Yeah, and I think it's all different stakeholders that we are addressing are benefiting from that, and interoperability is definitely a very important part of our industry going forward.

Right. Well, it's, uh, I think that a big portion of it is, like you mentioned, innovation, right? How do you keep innovation alive in an organization that is about agreement and alignment? What's the secret sauce to move these big companies forward in the same direction?

So I think a very important topic that we bring in all our meetings is actually encouraging our members to come with ideas because we as an organization have our ears to the market through our members. Of course, we have our own feet on the ground and we talk to the people, we listen to the markets, we have different roles within an organization that are very good at interviewing different stakeholders. But the very important topic is to encourage our members to bring the real problem to us. So if, for instance, a member who is a hardware manufacturer to develop some kind of, uh, camera hardware comes to us with ideas and say, listen, uh, we believe that we need to solve this, um, uh, communication protocol issue because it will help us to address more markets. So this is where we try to start working and start to ask other companies, um, whether this problem is also something they, uh, seen before in the field. So a lot of that work is actually encouraging communication. When we have the topic, it's really a communication towards our members and trying to understand whether there is more than just one member seeing this issue. So it's very, uh, uh, It's a huge work of collaboration and consensus because the whole setup of the organization is built on the consensus. And there are very strict rules that's made in order to prevent certain players or individual players to dictate technology or standards. It's all based on the consensus and I think it's, it's really fantastic to see how people actually collaborating within the organization. It's, it's great fun. I'm really enjoying it.

From an engineer mind, of course, that's, you know, combination of social and, you know, technical. Have there been tough moments where aligning the stakeholders globally felt impossible? How did you navigate that?

Well, continue discussing. And openness, openness and respect is something that helps to find and navigate through, through those challenges. And we do have from time to time very difficult questions on the table, both technological but also organizational questions that we need to tackle. And Again, I mean, based on the spirit of collaboration, openness, and strategic alignment, I must say that we very seldom end up in the situation where we cannot solve issues very quickly and we need to table it and come back to the discussion. But it's always been productive discussions and we're always able to find a solution based on consensus.

Sure.

So actually, I'm super proud of that part that we're Always able to, to agree.

That's great. That's unique though. Well, yeah, and speaking of technology and change, uh, AI is always a part of our conversation in this forum because it does have an impact and because it is moving things forward faster and it's changing and evolving our industry in a way that sometimes feels like escapes us the second and it's out and What's the impact of AI for your organization?

Well, this is the topic that we could talk another hour about. I would love to see AI as a kind of double-sided, double sides of the same coin. From one side, it's a fantastic technological piece that allows our industry to be more efficient, to identify threats ideally before it happens and prevent them, to analyze data more efficiently. And obviously, once the data is analyzed, it needs to be transmitted. This is where ONVIF wants to make sure that it's transmitted in a way that is unified, that everybody can understand. And we do have a first attempt of doing that as a Profile M. That specifies some of the analytics metadata, but AI is much broader than that. So we continue to work on that part, like how to transmit AI-generated data. This is one part, and this is very important for us to, to, to continue working with the standardization, uh, to make sure that data generated are being used in unified way. This is, uh, but another thing that we are looking at is actually what threats AI are posing to our industry. And I mean, we've all seen on YouTube or other platforms a massive amount of sometimes very funny videos that AI generated, and we laugh at that. But actually, you and I can create AI-powered videos at no time, at no cost. And it's very difficult to see whether it's authentic or not. So that actually forced people to ask the question when they see surveillance video, is it real video or has it been altered or even created by AI? So just imagine if you are in a court of law and the prosecutor presenting evidence as surveillance video, for instance, And, um, an attorney can easily turn it down by saying, you know what, um, based on the fact that there is so many free tools that can generate this video, can you prove it's authentic? It's very, very difficult. So we, we do have a lot of solutions that's, uh, watermarking video when you export it from video management system, but actually we cannot guarantee what happened before. So when video leaving the camera, it passing through a lot of network nodes, passing through switches, hubs, servers, etc. And it can be intercepted on the way, it can be altered on the way. So ONVIF is working and releasing shortly a standard for basically digital signing of video at the sensor. So that will help us to keep the trust in surveillance video, and it will help us to verify that the video, which is actually the content we want to have, is authentic and hasn't been tampered with.

Right.

So it's 2 sides. We help AI to generate more data, but we also prevent AI from faking it.

Right. And, uh, it, like you said, it's, it's very common now to see and hard to distinguish. So, yeah, um, when people look at your impact, you know, being in the industry for as long as you have and leading this organization, what do you hope they see? Uh, what, what do you hope they, uh, learn from your leadership? And where do you want to land in your legacy? Or continue to build your legacy, that would be the correct way to say it.

Yeah, well, um, I would love to see that the work we're doing is actually, uh, helping our, our industry to grow. And if we look at our industry, uh, in general terms, we are there to, to protect, uh, our citizens, right? So we are there to protect society, protect assets, and prevent bad things from happening. So, and if we as an organization can help our industry on this journey, I think we've done a fantastic job. So this is what I would love, uh, at some time in the future be my legacy, that will really help this organization to be, uh, to be even— to make our world even safer place.

That's great.

This is something that we're really focusing on.

Absolutely. And, you know, security professionals, sometimes we focus so much on the technology. And it's always important to remember that we are saving lives and property and assets. Is there a belief that you, you have? Did you feel that you needed to unlearn as a leader in this space?

To unlearn?

Yeah.

Well, um, as we said in the beginning, I mean, this, uh, this world, this technology universe is changing so rapidly and so quickly. And I think, um, the pace of development is constantly increasing. So I think what we're— what was true yesterday, not necessarily true today. And I think as a leader you always need to have this mindset of, uh, be able to question yourself. You need to be sure on, on, on, on that you're on the right path, but, uh, you also need to be open to external factors and be able to alter when needed, right? So it's, it's 2 different things being, uh, strict to the, to the strategy and idea, but also hear and learn constantly what's going on. And sometimes it's, again, things that was true yesterday need to be reevaluated tomorrow. I remember very well in the '90s, 8 kilobytes RAM in computer was good enough, and everybody said that's never needed to be more than that. Well, if we're at that level today, you have a very, very slow—

You're not in business.

Exactly. So you need to be able to question even the things that are religious sometimes.

Absolutely. Do you feel that leaders today have a little bit of a gap in their decision-making when it comes to moving forward technology and organizations? And not just talking about within your organization, but across the commercial side of the industry, right? The end user. Is there a feel that that gap exists? And what do you feel is the limitation that might be possibly holding back on implementing technology?

I think it's very difficult to kind of pull everybody in the same box.

Sure.

We see a wide variety of leaders on the markets, uh, not only in our industry, by the way, but in general in the technology, in the technology domain. And, uh, some of those leaders are very focused, uh, on bringing the company's innovation out, so it kind of inside-out approach. But we also see others who generate the value to the market by taking, uh, outside-in approach. So trying to see, okay, what's your problem? How can I help you to solve this? And developing solutions and developing, you know, company business in a way that really solved the problem. So my personal, uh, my personal opinion is the truth is somewhere in between. The ultimate leadership is somewhere in between. You need to have your vision and ambition and how do you want to drive your, uh, your business forward. But you cannot do it isolated from the reality and the real needs. Because as, as we was talking about leadership within ONVIF or technological discussion within ONVIF, we always ask ourselves whose problem we're solving. As engineers, we're very passionate about technology. It's the greatest thing we know, right? So, and sometimes we just keep spinning the discussion because it's such fantastic technology. But it's always good to ask a question: will it help and how will it help? What's the real use case? So I think the combination of 2 approaches is that makes the leader an ultimate problem solver. with, uh, you know, great ambitions and great, uh, vision and mission statement for, for the enterprise.

Great. Well, here's a, a little different question, changing on our conversation on technology and leadership. There's a percent of our viewers that are starting their careers and they're looking for advice, thinking Back when you started your career as a new engineer, knowing what you now know today, what advice would you give to yourself in those early years of your career?

Don't be scared to speak up. This is probably the most single important advice I would love to give the new engineers. Think from— think about that from that angle. Uh, you've been hired to the company for, uh, for your intelligence. Your intelligence and your skills, uh, are very often, uh, materialized through your opinion, not only through your code you develop or semiconductor, uh, you know, box you've built. It's all also your opinion, what you think is right, what you think is wrong. Uh, and, uh, be able to speak up, be able to speak up your opinion, uh, with respect to others, but, but don't be afraid that people don't want to listen. You are in this position because people want to listen to you. Just think about that and, uh, be open about what you really think.

Absolutely. I think, I think that's such an important— for anybody starting their careers to have that confidence, right? It's okay to have an opinion, and whether it's, um, not exactly correct, you can learn from that as well. Well, um, Leo, as I promised, this has been a fast and furious conversation. I think we could have continued for another easy another hour, like you said. Uh, I do have a lot more questions about AI. Maybe we leave it to the next chapter. But I want to ask you, if someone wants to reach out to you, connect with you, what's the easiest way to do that?

So the easiest way, obviously, when it comes to the ONVIF-related question is onvif.org. You'll see a lot of information and all the contact details there. Reach out on LinkedIn to me if there are any other questions. So I'm an easy person.

Great, great to hear. Looking forward to our next conversation, Leo. Thank you for sharing not just your expertise but your story, the values behind your standards, and the heart behind the technology. To our viewers, until next time, stay informed, stay secure, and we'll see you in the next Check Point. Thank you.

Thank you.