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Proactive estate security in Cape Town

SMART Security Solutions started the year with our annual SMART Estate Security Conference in Cape Town on 26 February 2026. Held at Anna Beulah Farm, the conference saw a number of delegates enjoying the farm’s excellent cuisine, while listening to outstanding presenters.

The sponsors exhibited in the same hall where the presentations were delivered, displaying a variety of solutions to the audience. This year, the Gold Sponsors included neaMetrics and OneSpace, and the Silver Sponsors comprised ATG Digital, Gallagher, Nemtek, Radinium, and Securex.

Starting the conversation

Taking a different approach to general keynote sessions, Lesley-Anne Kleyn spoke about transforming estate security from reactive to proactive operations that prevent rather than respond to incidents. Kleyn began by setting the stage in a traditional presentation style, speaking about the four pillars of proactive security: processes, people, technology, and physical barriers. She then gave an example of applying them to a key security area for estates: the perimeter.

She then went into the security value chain, which includes all the people and organisations required to actually do the job, from a civils contractor for infrastructure work through to armed response. Highlighting the extent of the value chain in this industry, Kleyn mentioned 18 elements of it, noting that there are yet more (depending on the estate’s requirements).

Kleyn then transformed her presentation into a conversation, asking questions and engaging with estate personnel and industry players, from system integrators to vendors, to highlight real issues and approaches to designing, planning, installing, running, and maintaining security operations. This conversational approach highlighted many issues that estates face in their constant battle to secure residents and visitors, as well as the strategies they use to address them.

When it comes to ROI (return on investment), Kleyn was clear: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In the real world, this means estates do not buy technology or siloed applications, but integrated, turnkey solutions that cover all the pillars, with layers of proven technology and services.

Demolishing silos

Johan van Wyk, sales and marketing director for Fang and Astrosec continued the conversation, examining the benefits of having all the role players in a security solution ‘around the table’ and speaking the same language to ensure estates have one security solution, not multiple, independent silos.

Van Wyk highlighted how estate security has changed, with today’s estates expecting traditional security and more, often intelligence-driven services. A key chokepoint in achieving effective, integrated security is that technology for almost anything is abundant, but strategy is rare.

As an example, he says residents and visitors want fast, but secure access with less friction at the gate, while the security environment should also enhance their lifestyle value. Proactive security solutions enable this by predicting threats before they escalate, using analytics (and, dare we say, AI) to guide decisions, and layered perimeter intelligence, all supported by the four pillars Kleyn mentioned.

Van Wyk said that proactive means collaboration. Effective, integrated security to achieve today’s demands requires collaboration across all service providers. Estates can no longer afford to have groups or individual service providers working in silos, each with their own technology approach; standardised, open systems and processes must be the norm.

He also touched on cybersecurity and the need to secure networks and all electronic devices used for security and in other areas. This applies especially to systems and services that offer or demand remote access. Van Wyk ended with four steps to proactive resilience:

• Audit your current infrastructure.

• Identify integration gaps.

• Implement layered detection.

• Move toward intelligence-led operations.

Integrating drone services

Michael Lever, technical director at 24/7 Drone Force, spoke on the issues involved in implementing a drone programme for an estate, sharing operational experience from previous implementations and the challenges encountered, with the goal of helping estates develop a practical framework for aerial response in their security plans.

Lever started out explaining how the landscape has changed over the years, as well as the evolving expectations of stakeholders: owners, tenants and even visitors. One of the challenges all estates face is that of managing their long perimeters. Even with cameras and other technology and personnel available, it still takes time, normally several minutes, to get a security response team to the site of a breach. By then, if the intruders breached the perimeter defences, they would have vanished into the estate. With drones on call, the response time can be as little as three minutes from launch to location.

The solution is not simply putting a drone in the sky, but data. Estates need to integrate all their security and operational resources into a single, intelligent operational picture to provide security teams with optimal, real-time information. This includes data from people (guards on patrol, for example), processes, technology (cameras, sensors, drones, etc.), and also management (which includes the oversight of the previous three).

Drones are not limited to security operations, however. During patrols along a perimeter, or whatever path the estate determines, they can be used to monitor almost anything happening on the estate. This ranges from construction progress to infrastructure and facilities inspections, and event oversight.

The realities of deploying drone solutions, assuming the estate retains a ‘drones-as-a-service’ solution and avoids the hassle of certifications, licensing, and employing pilots, mean that setup can take up to 90 days. This ensures the integration of all technical and human resources, etc. It is also important to obtain buy-in from ground staff (security officers) to ensure a coherent response.

Lever then provided a few examples of how his company uses drones for different clients – including recognising a truck’s number plate.

AI, integration and a PoPIA surprise

Barry East, CEO of OneSpace, started his presentation with information from the Information Regulator, which appears to have an issue with the data collected at entrances from visitors. While proper handling of information is critical, trying to prevent secure access control at estates could pose a significant security problem in the future. Although it is too late to comment on the regulator’s ideas, the document can be downloaded at https://tinyurl.com/58d7d9en.

East then moved on to his ‘real’ presentation, noting that staff on estates have many responsibilities and are generally overwhelmed by information and tasks. However, 26% of an employee’s day is “wasted on avoidable administrative chores, unnecessary tasks, and outdated ways of working”. He says that over 40% of their time on manual digital administrative processes could be automated.

The problem is hard to correct, even with AI, because the information used is a mix of structured and unstructured data that is difficult to integrate. However, doing the work to collate and manage this data delivers benefits of having your entire estate, security operations, management, admin, etc., available in a single interface to allow you to get a birds-eye view of operations at any point in time.

This is where AI comes into the picture. AI is growing at an unprecedented rate and will be able not only to collate data from many different sources, but also to do many admin jobs that consume so much of employees’ time. Staff can then be employed for useful, value-adding work, freeing up the 40% of their time.

Moreover, AI can unlock insights into integrated data, some of which may not have been visible before, while delivering predictive alerts, enabling estate operations to adopt a proactive approach. Searching the data becomes simpler with natural language search.

Facial recognition: the benefits for security

FaceCamAlert’s CEO, Tiaan Janse van Rensburg, was up next with a presentation on the benefits of facial recognition technology, not for access control at the gate, but via surveillance cameras.

Janse van Rensburg started with an overview of the situation in South Africa, from an economic and risk perspective. He noted that when residents feel safe, property retains its value, but security incidents undermine people’s confidence in an estate, resulting in a drop in selling prices.

He went on to say that the perimeter is not always the biggest risk to estates, but rather ‘authorised people’, who are permitted onto the estate. These people may have the identity documents to visit the estate, or be tenants or owners, but nobody knows who they really are. For example, the average time a person is on the SAPS wanted list is 4,6 years before the law catches up with them, during which time they can get up to all kinds of mischief.

By integrating a facial recognition system into surveillance cameras that legally compares their faces to the SAPS wanted list or other reliable databases, this risk is contained. Naturally, the proper PoPIA preparations, such as forms and documents, as well as signage, are required, which FaceCamAlert assists with. When a person of interest is detected, the estate can be alerted, and internal processes followed – such as alerting SAPS that a wanted person is on site. If a face is not on the list, the image is deleted in accordance with PoPIA.

This option enhances the safety of people within the estate, resulting in safer communities and estate living without unnecessarily invading people’s privacy.

Not all cameras on an estate must be connected to the facial recognition system, which helps keep costs under control, while improving the safe environment that people pay for in estates.

The evolution of access control

Ariel Flax, director of ATG Digital, was up next to discuss the evolution of access control systems and processes, and how these systems support a proactive security approach today. The basic fact, as mentioned in other presentations on the day, is that crime is escalating, technology is accelerating at an incredible pace, and residents are demanding more (more convenience for themselves, along with improved security).

Flax discusses the full access control risk chain, including residents, visitors, contractors, and delivery service providers, which keeps guards jumping, and the unified management of them all. He touched on various best practices for managing individual risks and their combined impact, while noting once again that the rise of delivery services and e-hailers often disrupts traditional access control processes.

Some of the best practices he touched on focus on resilience, including ensuring offline operations, PoPIA compliance, and “the exit problem”. The exit problem is defined as not knowing when visitors leave the estate, when they stay longer than permitted, when vehicles leave with a different driver, and more, resulting in incomplete audit trails.

Flax then provided an example of how the ATG has addressed these issues at Century City, which covers 250 hectares with multi-use facilities, to make the location secure and keep people safe.

AI agents make their mark

Kelly McLintock, chief revenue officer at the ITACC Group, ended the day with a presentation on agentic AI and how this technology has advanced. McLintock gave a brief introduction to the development of intelligent machines, as well as the security operations on estates, before asking the question: “How do we govern, integrate, and collaborate with thinking machines?”

He says AI has moved beyond a tool that identifies movement and objects, reducing false alarms and alerting control room operators. “In an estate an agentic AI agent does not just detect movement and classify it, it classifies intent, verifies patterns, triggers the correct response protocol, documents the event and then updates the risk model.”

The point he made is that detection is not prevention and alerts are not outcomes. Security is generally overwhelmed in estates, even with false alarm monitoring by AI services, but humans are not, in general, good at “sustaining high-quality repetitive signal processing”. Operator fatigue is a clear example of this.

Agentic AI is the answer, according to McLintock, where agentic AI uses intelligence to be the operator. It is a layer of security that continuously observes all sensor inputs and determines intent and risk. It then initiates the correct protocol (calling armed response and SAPS, for example), documents the chain of events, and learns from outcomes to improve future responses.

Proving his point, McLintock then demonstrated SARA, an agentic AI system that actually does the above, autonomously. Even over the poor bandwidth at the venue, McLintock sent a video through to the cloud-based system, which was followed by a call from SARA, informing him of the event. More than simply having a call with a voice telling you an event has occurred, SARA engages in conversation, answering questions (such as “has anyone been injured”), providing more information until the call recipient tells her to implement the correct protocol. The correct protocol could be SARA simultaneously dispatching armed response units, calling for medical assistance, and calling the security and estate managers.

The conference then ended with networking and snacks. SMART Security Solutions would like to thank the presenters, the sponsors and the attendees for making the day a great success. The estate security conference will be moving to Durban, KZN later in the year.

For more information contact:

• ATG Digital, +27 10 500 8611, sales@atthegate.biz, www.atgdigital.biz

• Gallagher Security, +27 11 974 4740, sales.za@gallagher.com, www.gallaghersa.co.za

• neaMetrics, +27 11 784 3952, info@neametrics.com, www.neametrics.com

• Nemtek, +27 11 462 8283, websales@nemtek.com, www.nemtek.com

• OneSpace, +27 31 035 0941, info@one-space.co.za, www.one-space.co.za

• Radinium, +27 21 976 2560, info@radinium.com, www.radinium.com

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