Active shooter preparedness is shifting outward. For decades, most planning focused on interior hardening—locked classrooms, fortified rooms, interior alerts, and response training. But as incidents accelerate and attackers move quickly through public and semi-public spaces, organizations are rethinking where real prevention begins.

The consensus among security leaders today is clear: if the first meaningful detection happens inside the building, the defensive advantage is already gone. Modern strategies push intelligence, automation, and access control outward to the very edges of a property. The perimeter is no longer a fence line or a lobby—it is the first opportunity to understand, shape, and respond to risk.

The Perimeter Is Now the First Point of Advantage

Active shooter events unfold faster than traditional, human-triggered protocols can respond. FBI case data shows a median law-enforcement response time of about three minutes, and in many incidents, the critical decisions that could slow or stop an attacker must occur before officers arrive.

Inside the building, the people responsible for emergency actions—locking exterior doors, making an all-call, shutting down elevators—often have little or no time to act once an assailant is inside. This exposes a structural vulnerability: any protocol that depends on human recognition and manual activation is already behind the curve.

Extending the defensive posture to the perimeter buys time: time to detect anomalies, time to verify threats, and time to intervene before an attacker reaches interior spaces. Parking lots, approach paths, garages, and transition zones are no longer neutral public areas; they are becoming intelligent observation and control points designed to slow and disrupt an attack before it gains momentum.

The Rise of Predictive Perimeter Intelligence

Traditional systems identify threats once something has already happened: a forced door, a triggered camera analytic, a shot fired. Modern AI-driven platforms reverse that approach.

Davista is finding that advanced analytic engines are now correlating data across multiple systems—video metadata, access control logs, LPR reads, IoT sensors, PIDS activity, environmental cues, and operational patterns—to identify deviations from the established baseline. These deviations often represent the earliest indicators of pre-operational planning, reconnaissance, or emotional escalation.

Davista’s CEO Scott Sieracki describes the shift bluntly:
“For years, security teams have been reacting to what already occurred. The real evolution is using data to understand what is forming—not after the fact, but as it emerges. When you can see patterns before they escalate, you fundamentally change the timeline of defense.”

In schools, this can mean identifying behavioral trends or distress signals long before they surface as crisis events. In healthcare and government facilities, it may involve detecting unusual access attempts, repeated presence near restricted zones, or anomalies in movement patterns.

The value isn’t simply the alert itself. Predictive systems can also direct officer patrols, adjust camera tours, escalate awareness, and prime building controls before an incident unfolds. This is how the perimeter becomes a proactive shield rather than a static boundary.

Automation When Every Second Counts

Once violence begins, speed becomes the defining factor. Human response—even from trained personnel—is limited by recognition time, communication delays, and the chaos of the moment. Automated gunshot detection closes that gap by validating gunfire instantly and triggering protective actions without waiting for human interpretation.

Shooter Detection Systems (SDS) applies a dual-mode design—acoustic detection of the muzzle blast paired with infrared confirmation of the muzzle flash—to verify gunfire in under a second. This military-derived approach dramatically reduces false alerts and maintains accuracy both indoors and in open-air perimeter environments, where reflections, shockwaves, and environmental noise typically challenge conventional systems. The system processes all data at the edge, with no audio leaving the sensor, preserving user privacy while accelerating confirmation.

“False gunfire alarms cause chaos with law enforcement and can be very harmful for a brand in the media. Our dual-mode sensors give 99.9 percent accuracy with less than one false alert per five million hours, which is critical for maintaining trust during a live incident,” said James Reno, Vice President of North America Commercial Sales at SDS.

Once a shot is confirmed, SDS immediately activates pre-programmed workflows: automated elevator lockdown, zone-based notifications, camera call-ups, access-control actions, mass-notification triggers, and real-time intelligence sent directly to first responders. In past incidents, attackers advanced from lobbies into upper floors because the person responsible for shutting down elevators was killed or unable to act. Automated systems eliminate that vulnerability by initiating protective actions in the first second of an attack without relying on on-site personnel to trigger them.

SDS has also extended this accuracy outdoors to the perimeter, where many attacks now begin. In a recent case study, the system detected a drive-by shooting targeting a facility, pinpointed the shooter’s distance and direction of travel, and generated timestamps that helped law enforcement correlate video feeds and ultimately apprehend the suspect. The event validated SDS’s dual-sensor approach in challenging outdoor environments, where accurate detection is essential to shaping an early response.

Detection is instantaneous, but coordination is everything. Automated gunshot validation provides the first signal; predictive intelligence determines what happens next. That second layer is where Davista’s Heimdall platform can affect the outcome.

From Detection to Coordinated Response

Gunshot detection delivers the first, critical signal, but facilities also need the intelligence that connects that alert to action. That’s where platforms like Davista’s Heimdall change the equation.

Heimdall doesn’t just flag a perimeter anomaly; it interprets it. When the system detects something out of pattern—an unauthorized vehicle lingering near a restricted bay, an unusual motion sequence on cameras, or a cluster of sensor hits that suggest coordinated probing—it immediately evaluates severity and confidence using contextual data from video metadata, LPR reads, access control, and PIDS.

From there, Heimdall’s orchestration layer can initiate tiered, pre-verified workflows:

• Escalating alerts to the right command center
• Re-routing patrols using AI-driven officer tours
• Triggering camera tours or changing camera sequences
• Pushing real-time notifications to on-scene personnel via SMS, email, or radio integrations

Because the platform is designed for situational convergence, it doesn’t act in a silo. Heimdall syncs with existing VMS, CAD/RMS, access control, and mass-notification platforms to automate protective steps—securing entry points, locking down zones, or initiating inter-agency coordination when thresholds are met. Every action is logged and time-stamped to support after-action review and compliance.

The outcome is a closed, real-time loop: detection, interpretation, orchestration, deployment. Data doesn’t just inform the response—it drives it.

Entrances as the Decisive Control Point

Predictive intelligence and automated detection provide early awareness, but the secure entrance determines the outcome at the threshold.

Entry architecture has become an influential factor in active-shooter defense. Modern secure entrances integrate identity verification, access control, biometrics, and forced-entry resistance into a single decision point. Organizations using solutions from companies like Boon Edam deploy security revolving doors, mantrap portals, full-height turnstiles, and optical turnstiles to enforce one-person-at-a-time entry and eliminate tailgating and piggybacking.

These entrance systems create:

• Controlled transition zones between public and restricted spaces
• Verified authentication through cards, PINs, or biometrics
• Chokepoints that regulate flow and prevent mass entry
• Lockdown-ready vestibules with remote control capabilities
• Delays that buy critical seconds during forced-entry attempts

Real-world deployments in police departments, municipal buildings, and government facilities demonstrate how layered entry architecture can deter armed intrusion or slow it long enough for response teams to intervene. After the Dallas Police Department shooting and at the Offenbach Police Headquarters in Hesse, Germany, security revolving doors and high-security portals were installed specifically to strengthen this critical interior line of defense.

This blend of architecture and technology is shifting how organizations think about the entrance itself. Amanda Powell, Marketing Manager at Boon Edam USA, explains: “A secure entrance isn’t just a doorway, it’s a decisive control point. When identity verification, flow control, and forced-entry resistance all converge at a single threshold, you create a protective layer that meaningfully limits unauthorized entry.”

Additionally, ballistic-resistant glazing, hardened frames, overhead sensors, and automatic locking mechanisms turn the entrance into both a physical and procedural barrier, while still supporting smooth daily operations.

The Convergence Gap

Most organizations already have strong individual components: cameras, access control, intrusion sensors, panic buttons, elevator controls, radios, and communication systems. But they often operate in silos, generating isolated signals without a unified perspective.
The new perimeter model requires convergence.

A modern defensive posture integrates:

• Predictive analytics to identify early-stage anomalies
• Automated gunshot detection to validate violence instantly
• Secure entrances to regulate, verify, and delay access
• Unified communication platforms that orchestrate workflows
• Real-time visualization tools that show threat evolution

The advantage comes from the loop operating as one system rather than many. When these components work together, organizations gain the most valuable commodity in an attack: time.

Where Perimeter Strategy Is Evolving Next

Several emerging capabilities could reshape perimeter defense in the coming years:

• Predictive intent modeling that evaluates why behaviors are forming
• AI-driven situational awareness that merges video, LPR, IoT, and access data
• Wireless, edge-processing sensors that deploy easily across large or distributed properties
• Fusion with complementary technologies such as weapons detection, drone detection, and outdoor gunshot detection
• Identity-first access control centered on biometrics
• Entrance designs that balance sustainability with high-security performance
• Automated orchestration capable of initiating protection sequences without human delay

Each of these advancements strengthens the same objective: recognizing risk earlier, automating faster, and controlling access more effectively at the perimeter.

The Perimeter Is Now the Beginning of Defense

Active shooter planning no longer starts at the lobby or the classroom door. It begins at the outer edges of a property, where organizations can detect pre-incident behaviors, automate life-saving responses, and control who enters, and who doesn’t.

• Predictive intelligence gives foresight.
• Automated detection provides speed.
• Secure entrances determine outcomes.

Together, they make the perimeter the most decisive layer of modern active shooter defense.

By Heather Martin with insights from Davista, Boon Edam, and Shooter Detection Systems

Identity Fusion Is the New Perimeter

Multi-modal fusion identity intelligence blends biometric, digital, behavioral, and contextual signals into one fast, high-confidence verification process. At air, land, and sea ports, this approach is already driving faster throughput, higher accuracy, and a frictionless AID2entry experience.

For integrators, consultants, and smart perimeter leaders, the implications are clear: identity is becoming part of the perimeter. Credentials are shifting from physical cards, PINs, and QR codes to mobile and biometric authentication. Cameras and sensors are evolving into identity-acquisition endpoints, and access control is moving from a simple badge swipe to a real-time identity decision.

And the border itself is entering a new phase. As defense and identity converge, the U.S. is becoming what I like to call, “Defentified” (Defense + Identified), a blended approach where perimeter systems and identity intelligence work as one.

What Security Leaders Must Solve Next

As AID2entry systems move beyond federal borders and begin shaping corporate campuses, critical infrastructure, and enterprise access programs, new questions emerge:

1. How do we deploy identity and access systems responsibly and transparently?
2. How do we communicate trust and consent to U.S. travelers, and tomorrow, to employees?
3. How do we design mobile, touchless, frictionless access that identifies a person, not just a device in proximity?
4. And the biggest question: how will we monetize identity intelligence as a product or as an ongoing service?

The U.S. border is already becoming Defentified. The same identity-driven methods that have proven themselves at air, land, and sea ports will soon influence how we secure campuses, workplaces, high-value assets, and the organizations we protect.

For the physical security industry, the opportunity—and responsibility—isn’t approaching. It has arrived.

And yes, keep your passport, ID, and keycard in your bag for now… just in case the future takes one more year to fully catch up.

By Doug OGorden