Welcome to Volume 1 of The Security Breakdown!

Following up on Brief 88's announcement about our vision as a digital-first media company (perhaps the first of its kind in our industry), I'm thrilled to share how we're expanding beyond Access Control while maintaining our global reach with local impact.

Here's our next chapter.

Introducing “The Security Breakdown.”

We're launching an exciting new initiative in partnership with Brian Karas and a network of global security experts, each a leader in their respective fields. The Security Breakdown will deliver:

• Security industry roundups that cut through the noise

• Deep technical analyses from practitioners who live and breathe security

• Expert opinions on video surveillance, perimeter security, intrusion detection, security operations, and more

• Rich content across multiple formats: technical papers, white papers, articles, videos (both short and long-form), podcasts, and live events, ensuring you can engage with the content in a way that suits you best.

Think of it as your comprehensive security intelligence hub with a distinct identity and design separate from The Access Control Executive Brief, which continues to provide the same high-quality access control and smart lock content you expect.

What This Means For You, Current Access Control Executive Brief Members: You are all set. This additional expert content will seamlessly integrate into your existing Access Control Executive Brief, Slack community, and events like ACS25. All under the same brand.

Not yet a member? You've got options:

• Join The Access Control Executive Brief for the whole experience

• Subscribe to The Security Breakdown's for a free newsletter.

• Connect with us on LinkedIn

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel

• Meet us in person at industry events like:

  • ACS25 and AC/MA

  • ISC West and East

  • The Security Event (Birmingham and Singapore)

  • Intersec (Dubai and Saudi)

  • Securing New Ground

  • Security Investor Conference

The goal? Delivering relevant, drama-free, and actionable security insights whether you're a practitioner or ecosystem partner.

A Thank You Note: Special thank you to Brian Karas for architecting The Security Breakdown with me, Tony Dong for his continued excellence in financial analysis, and our soon-to-be-announced content creators. Most importantly, thank you to our community members for sharing this journey. Together, we're building the security community we want and genuinely need.

I am looking forward to sharing more as we continue to grow.

My promise: we will unveil and unravel.

Welcome to a new dawn in security industry news, information, research, and opinions. Dramatic, I know, but I feel it. Here's what I mean.

Building a digital media business demands a fundamental choice: Will you unveil or unravel?

To unveil means to thoughtfully present information through structured storytelling that educates. To unravel means to deconstruct and expose, prioritizing sensation over substance.

Some master the art of unraveling - manufacturing drama, teasing "sourced" revelations, and trading substance for speculation. Don't be fooled; their methods reveal their true nature.

And they are exhausting for everyone.

Modern media organizations face this same crossroads: Will you be a trusted source of insight or not?

I've made my choice: I choose to unveil. We decide to unveil.

We choose to show up with integrity.

It's no more complicated than that.

See you online and in person.

The following content previews the type of work you can expect from Brian Karas - varying in length and frequency but consistently relevant and engaging.

Thank you!

PS: I am sure some of you may forward this, but please do so sparingly and encourage others to sign up here. Thank you!

Originally launched as AnyVision, then rebranded to Oosto, the Israeli face recognition startup has been acquired by parking technology company Metropolis. The acquisition has been described as an all-stock deal with Oosto valued at $125M, on ~$10-15M in annual revenue. While that revenue multiple isn’t the worst deal by far for an analytics exit, when you consider that Oosto raised well over $300M during their time, it’s hard to paint this as anything other than a bad ending for the company.

AnyVision launched hard into the security market in the 2018 time frame, building out a robust US sales team with people mostly pulled from Avigilon. As I knew many of those people from my time at Avigilon, I had some inside perspective from the people working in sales at the time. The team, of at least 2 dozen people, each carried a ~$1M sales quote for their first year. For a product in a well established sector of the industry, a $1M quota is a cake walk. For a face recognition startup, that number might as well have been $100M. There was limited chance of any single person hitting their target, and the entire team’s quota outstripped the total market for face rec software in the US at the time. Not to mention AnyVision still had competition in that relatively small market.

Stories from the early days of AnyVision often included tales of unpaid commissions, and deployments with many technical issues. In particular, access control integrations were particularly error prone, and caused headaches for anyone involved. 

In 2021 AnyVision rebranded to Oosto, and raised $325M from Softbank and other investors. Their valuation had climbed as high as $500M, even though sales never gained the runrate and momentum to justify that number.

While this deal is ultimately bad for AnyVision/Oosto’s investors, and most likely the majority of employees, it is also not great for the security industry in general. In recent years, the security industry has been attracting new money at an impressive pace, much different than even a decade ago in this space. But in order to continue to appeal to the investor space, and help accelerate growth in this space we need to ensure that valuations go up, not down, and that means less hype and more results, particularly for AI companies.

No details have been released on exactly how Metropolis plans to incorporate Oosto’s technology, though presumably the face recognition functionality has a lot of potential in the parking market. Checking in and out of a parking garage with a face scan sounds much more elegant than banging on a ticket dispenser while reaching awkwardly out of your car. Several executives of Oosto will also remain and have roles within Metropolis, so we may still see Oosto’s technology reach their prior vision of widespread deployment.