The US government banned Hikvision and Dahua – the two largest CCTV manufacturers in the world – from federal procurement in 2022 under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The reason: security concerns over data access by the Chinese government through camera firmware. The UK, Australia, and several EU countries followed with their own restrictions on Chinese surveillance equipment in sensitive government locations.

Hikvision and Dahua together control roughly 40% of the global CCTV camera market. This ban didn’t make them disappear – but it created a massive vacuum in the government and institutional procurement segment globally.

The global surveillance industry has moved decisively toward AI-at-the-edge. Modern IP cameras don’t just record – they process video locally using onboard AI chips. Face recognition, license plate reading, crowd density analysis, abnormal behaviour detection – all happening in real time inside the camera itself, before the footage even reaches a server.

This shift is being driven by the explosion of affordable edge AI chips (NVIDIA Jetson, Ambarella, Hisilicon alternatives) and the demand for real-time analytics without the bandwidth cost of sending 4K streams to a central server for processing.

In 2021, a hacker collective breached over 150,000 cameras from a single vendor across hospitals, police stations, prisons, and corporate offices globally – live feeds were accessed, PTZ cameras were controlled remotely, and footage was leaked. This wasn’t an isolated incident. Vulnerable CCTV cameras are now one of the most common entry points for network breaches worldwide.

In response, governments globally are mandating cybersecurity standards for surveillance equipment – encrypted firmware, mandatory password changes, secure boot, regular update requirements. The EU’s Cyber Resilience Act specifically calls out connected cameras as high-risk devices requiring compliance.

In mature markets like the US, UK, and Japan, VSaaS (Video Surveillance as a Service) is growing fast. Instead of a local NVR, cameras stream directly to cloud storage. No on-site recording hardware, no hard drive failures, no storage limits – just a monthly subscription. Companies like Eagle Eye Networks, Verkada, and Arcules are scaling this model aggressively.

The infrastructure requirement for cloud surveillance is fundamentally different – high-bandwidth uplink from every camera location, reliable internet connectivity, and cameras designed for cloud streaming rather than local recording.

Post-COVID, and accelerated by US-China trade tensions, global corporations are aggressively diversifying manufacturing away from China. Apple, Samsung, and dozens of electronics manufacturers have expanded production in India, Vietnam, and Mexico. This “China+1” strategy is reshaping global electronics supply chains – including the components that go into surveillance equipment.

For surveillance specifically, the push is dual – both camera manufacturers and infrastructure component suppliers (cables, connectors, power equipment) are being pushed to establish non-China manufacturing capacity to serve global demand.

Power over Ethernet has evolved dramatically. Standard PoE delivers 15W. PoE+ delivers 30W. The new PoE++ (802.3bt) standard delivers up to 90W over a single CAT6 cable – enough to power AI cameras with heaters, PTZ motors, IR illuminators, and onboard compute simultaneously. This standard is being adopted globally in high-end surveillance deployments.

The cable requirement for PoE++ is significantly more demanding – conductor resistance, crosstalk performance, and thermal handling all need to meet tighter specifications. Not all CAT6 cables handle 90W PoE reliably over longer runs.