Voume 124

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Special note before we get started. This will likely be the final Brief of 2025. I want to extend, on behalf of myself and the entire team at TACC, happy holiday wishes and a very, very Happy and Prosperous New Year to you and yours. Thank you for the support and the opportunities you’ve given us. We’re grateful for each and every one of you, and we’re excited for what’s ahead in 2026. Happy holidays!

Here is what 1,029 LinkedIn posts, 35,000 Slack messages, and 44 written Briefs taught me about the industry and ourselves, especially me.

As the year winds down, I've been reviewing every LinkedIn post I published from January 1 through December 8 (we use a tool to help with this). There were 1,029 of them in total. That number surprised me at first, then made perfect sense as Hilary and I looked a bit deeper into them. The past twelve months have felt like a sprint through a fast-changing industry where every day seemed to bring a new insight, a new city, a new idea, a new acquisition, a new conversation worth having.

But it wasn’t just the posts that told the story. Before I get into those, here is why I am doing a reflection versus a 2026 Trends.

I’ll be honest…I am not feeling a “2026 Trends” Brief this year. Maybe it is my age or the time of the year, I don’t know, but I found myself drawn to looking back at everything written in 2025 (as of 12/8) and what it tells us/me about 2026.

Side note: the data and amount of content are wild, and it is a lot. For a small team, I love the productivity. But this also represents a change in our business, the community, and me. As a business, when we started back in 2020 (with a brief pause in 2021 and a reboot in 2022), we built this with community in mind, focused on access control, leveraging digital platforms, and sharing my voice and presence on LinkedIn. We haven’t wavered on the community mindset, but in 2025, we had an aha moment as this moved beyond access control and included an equal amount of in-person time, and, thankfully, from me to many other personalities, or what we are calling Key Opinion Leaders. And with that, we are going to double down on that change in 2026. 2026 is the year we focus even more heavily on the community through The PhySec Collective (we are going to transition off Slack to an even better community tool, and with this, a ton of resources will be built around it). We will expand into even more of the physical security industry by producing and distributing content from these Key Opinion Leaders across the globe and across all aspects of the value chain in physical security (code for: not just product and not just access control). We believe - because of you - we have the largest digital water cooler in the industry, and we plan to expand upon that. We believe we also have a fantastic opportunity to build a network to produce content (keep an eye out for PhySec Studios), create an environment for more in-person and online conversation, and be the destination where the physical security industry shows up globally. More to come on all of this, but I wanted to make sure I expressed that we, too, are evolving and changing, just like you, and the entire ecosystem.

Ok, back to this Brief…

The 2025 Access Control Executive Briefs, the industry's running editorial brain dump, served as the through-line. This is, more or less, my real-time commentary and my connective tissue with many of you globally.

The Briefs are where I can say what I feel needs to be said, while the posts show more of how the industry reacts.

When you combine the data from 1,029 posts on LinkedIn, the 35,000+ Slack messages, countless DMs, text messages, calls, and in-person meetings, with the full year of 88 Briefs, the story becomes clearer, sharper, and, in many ways, more honest. (remember that word for later…honesty).

This year the Briefs, messages, and the posts seemed to align. One of the most surprising things about the review was how closely the posts, messages, and the Briefs mirrored one another. The Briefs explored deeper themes, including identity, digital transformation, consolidation, innovation, distribution, and culture. The posts and messages amplified those themes in real time, and the industry reacted immediately. Together, they created a running public and private dialogue about where global access control is headed and why it is struggling to reach that destination. And it is important to note that where access control goes, so does the broader physical security industry.

Here are the stats behind the story and what the year looked like from the numbers alone:

On LinkedIn:

• 1,029 posts

• 3.5+ million impressions

• 346 image posts

• 158 video posts

• 412 instant shares

• Most active months were May (148 posts - that is ACS) and October (144 posts)

• Slowest month was June (36 posts)

• The strongest three-month run was August through October with 361 posts.

In Slack, we had:

• 35,141 messages

• 74% in public channels

• 1% in private channels

• 25% in direct messages

Across the Briefs:

• 44 published with a 60% open rate (high by many standards).

• More than 80,000 combined reads.

• Recurring engagement spikes each time the Briefs challenge industry norms or we post about breaking news

• Subscriber feedback consistently asks for more honesty and more analysis.

Month after month, the Briefs called out the same truths the posts later made visible through engagement patterns.

From January to March, the Briefs opened up with a focus on identity, cloud adoption, and the early signals of consolidation. Slack and LinkedIn engagement picked up around posts about ASSA ABLOY and the growing pressure for interoperability.

From April to June, the Briefs tested the industry’s comfort zone, asking hard questions about distribution norms, credential models, and outdated value propositions. This was the same period when posts about Apple and Google Wallet and pricing friction triggered some of the year's most intense conversations.

From July to September, the Briefs shifted toward what I would call “market realism,” highlighting Startups vs incumbents, real modernization vs marketing claims, and the widening competency gap. LinkedIn activity followed suit, with heavy engagement around Expo Seguridad (I encourage you to go check it out), GSX (it’s really time we stop spending money on this show and hold ourselves accountable), and in the market observations about who was moving and who was drifting (something old-time bloggers who don’t travel can’t do).

From October to December, the Briefs became the industry’s running commentary on consolidation (again - it was a big theme in 2025), leadership, and the strategic resets taking place behind the scenes. LinkedIn hit its second major spike of the year as the community responded to candid takes on acquisitions, misalignments, and the future of identity-first access control.

The Briefs provided the narrative. Your engagement in Slack and on LinkedIn proved the narrative was real.

The industry themes that dominated the year are....?

When you examine all of 2025 from the Briefs plus the posts, you see several truths rise above the noise.

First, access control is still an industry in search of its identity. The Briefs said this repeatedly and the posts showed how deeply it resonated. Companies spent the year claiming to be platforms while selling like hardware companies.

Pause and think about that for a second.

Everyone talked about experience while still shipping complexity. We preached interoperability while fully supporting lock-in. We pushed digital transformation while clinging to the economics of plastic credentials.

2025 made these contradictions impossible to ignore. My hope is that in 2026, we start talking and acting at the same time.

Then came consolidation, becoming the backbone of the story. Every major Brief and many LinkedIn posts this year examined the power shifts happening at the top of the market. This is part of the new truths I often talk about. ASSA ABLOY, Allegion, and dormakaba used capital and made moves. acre and AMAG are evolving. LenelS2/Honeywell is still integrating. Verkada has bulked up. Acquisitions are reshaping the middle tier, and startups/scaleups have a real seat at the table due to building capabilities incumbents refused to invest in.

The biggest takeaway is that consolidation is no longer a storyline but a structural reality. And space has opened up for many of the start ups and scale ups to accelerate. The impacts will be felt in 2026. It is time we see execution.

After that, Apple and Google wallets were the industry’s wake-up call. The Briefs dug into the Apple and Google Wallet access ecosystem all year long. Whether it was pricing, control, distribution, prioritization, or the friction around alignment, there was a constant conversation. On LinkedIn, Wallet posts consistently delivered some of the biggest spikes in impressions and comments. Apple and Google didn’t just launch a feature this year. It exposed how unprepared access control has been for real consumer expectations mixed with a reality of who and what our industry is. My hope in all of this is that we care more about people (and the market opportunity around it). Things like getting to know them, understanding them, user experience… all of it. We need to protect them and not just tell them, “Don’t worry, we've got you.” We actually need to understand them. Bring on the anthropologists and psychologists! Start there and let's work backward.

We also discussed how events exposed the truth. The Briefs covered and showed ISC West and East, The Security Event UK and Singapore, Intersec Dubai, Securing New Ground, Expo Seguridad, and even the inept GSX, are more than events. We treated them as industry X-rays. We also saw a ton of smaller and company shows take hold. On LinkedIn, people gravitated to candid behind-the-scenes observations: Who had a strategy? Who had a story? Who had a gimmick? Who had a plan? Who had a booth? Who is acting like nothing has changed and just iterating off of last year? Who understands branding and marketing? Events became live case studies of who is leading and who is coasting. It really is the simplest litmus test to see who gets it and who does not.

And lastly, people-centric content outperformed product-centric content. The Briefs spent the year emphasizing culture, leadership, capability, and the human side of security. My LinkedIn engagement validated this every time. Posts asking real questions, demanding accountability, or praising real progress consistently garnered more reactions than product announcements. See, we can be non-technical, and it is ok. We should be. This industry wants leadership. Not noise, no gotcha games, and no nonsense.

What 2025 really taught me about our industry: honesty.

If you combine the Briefs with the posts, one message rings louder than all the rest:

This industry is tired of pretending everything is fine and beholden to the past. 2025 was the year of out-loud honesty, and I am here for it. Many of you are tired of legacy thinking, the excuses of why it “can’t be,” the slow-moving innovation, complicated systems customers do not want, words without action, and, for the first time in a long time…people are saying it out loud as a collective community.  There is power in that, and we should use it. And get louder.

So, what comes next?

If 2025 was the year of honesty, 2026 must be the year of action. Enough talking, it is time to move.

This means:

• Rebuilding credibility around identity-first access. This is ours to own. We have the permission to do so.

• Ending the myth that modernization can be postponed. That is a cottage industry stance. We are a mainstream industry.

• Breaking business models that punish innovation.

• Rewarding companies that simplify instead of complicating.

• Creating experiences that customers actually enjoy and want.

• Developing leaders, not managers, who can guide this industry forward.

I promise you, I will not be quiet, the Briefs will continue to push, and the posts will continue to foster conversation that we can all measure through reactions.

And I know this… the industry will continue to decide whether it wants to evolve or be left behind.

2025 was the year we finally said the quiet part out loud. 2026 is the year we find out who meant it.

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