Breaking Out of the Security Show Mold (and Verkada’s Escape Room) at ISC West 2025

What an amazing experience we had at ISC West in Las Vegas this year! With thousands of visitors to our booth, we couldn't have asked for a better opportunity to connect with security professionals from around the world. Nothing compares to the value of in-person conversations with security professionals who use our solutions every day. Throughout the event, our team was energized by the thoughtful questions, feedback, and enthusiasm from everyone who stopped by. The opportunity to shake hands, demonstrate our latest innovations, and hear your stories firsthand is what makes ISC West so special for us.

Bringing Our Platform to Life

The centerpiece of the booth was a stunning 15-foot LED globe that visualized real-time platform activity across more than 90 Fortune 500 companies. This display offered attendees a powerful demonstration of Verkada's global impact and enterprise-scale capabilities.

We were absolutely blown away by the response to our escape room experience. With more than 2,000 participants tackling this interactive challenge, the energy was electric. The escape room provided a hands-on demonstration of how our products work together in real-world scenarios. This engaging format allowed attendees to experience firsthand how intuitive our interface is and how quickly relevant information can be found using the powerful capabilities of our integrated system. 

The journey began before even entering the room. Participants first signed in using Guest, Verkada’s visitor management system, which issued them a personalized badge, after which they were provided with an access card unique to them. With their credentials in hand, participants used the Intercom to badge into the escape room, experiencing firsthand how Verkada creates secure yet frictionless access to protected spaces.

The escape room experience centered on three key investigations, each tied to events near our San Mateo, California headquarters—uncovered remotely from Las Vegas using Verkada Command, our cloud-based management platform that allows users to manage devices from anywhere with power and internet. Participants used our platform to find the components of the 6-digit exit code:

• Investigation A challenged participants to use vehicle search, one of our many video security features powered by advanced AI and computer vision. This tool centralizes information on all vehicles detected across all cameras and allows users to find vehicles and license plates of interest in just a few clicks.

• Investigation B featured our history player search capability. Participants experienced how organizations can reconstruct a comprehensive history of a subject's whereabouts directly from a single point in time—a powerful tool for security professionals.

• Investigation C showcased Verkada's PTZ cameras, which offer up to 32x optical zoom and can detect people up to 5,200 feet (1,585 meters) away. Participants even got to use Xbox controllers paired with our PTZ cameras to find a flight number on a specific boarding pass.

To successfully escape the investigations had to be solved in 5 minutes or less, and we're proud to report that all but two groups successfully solved the puzzles within the time limit. After escaping, the access card was then returned in exchange for a spin on our holographic slot machine where everyone was a winner. Check out a quick overview of the experience:

AI, Integrations, and the Accelerating Transition to the Cloud

Our Enterprise Integrations & Insights hallway provided the perfect setting to demonstrate how Verkada integrates with third-party applications to streamline security across entire organizations. This revealed how important a connected ecosystem is to modern security operations, and we were proud to show our commitment to open, flexible integration. 

Our Command Connector demo was another crowd favorite, demonstrating how we're making cloud migration frictionless by supporting over 1,000 third-party camera models. We understand that leveraging existing infrastructure is crucial for many organizations, and we were excited to show how we're addressing this challenge.

But throughout our conversations with industry professionals, one theme consistently emerged: the excitement around AI in security. Attendees were eager to discuss how artificial intelligence is transforming traditional security approaches, and we were thrilled to share our vision for AI-enhanced security operations.

This aligns perfectly with what we discovered in our own industry survey last year . The findings clearly showed that AI advancements are becoming one of the primary drivers for cloud adoption in the security sector. The sophisticated processing power required to run advanced AI algorithms simply isn't feasible with traditional on-premises installations—the cloud is essential for delivering these capabilities at scale.

Security professionals we spoke with at ISC West confirmed this trend. They understand that leveraging AI for advanced threat detection, automated responses, and predictive analytics requires the computational elasticity that only cloud infrastructure can provide. This sentiment was repeatedly expressed in our conversations about the limitations of traditional on-premises systems and how cloud solutions overcome these barriers to deliver sophisticated AI capabilities.

The feedback confirmed what we've been focusing on—that intelligent, automated solutions powered by cloud infrastructure are the future of enterprise security.

Looking Ahead

As we reflect on our incredible week at ISC West, we're more excited than ever about the future of security. Your insights, questions, and enthusiasm fuel our innovation, and we're already incorporating your feedback into our development roadmap.

We can't wait to see you at the next industry event—until then, keep in touch by joining us at any of our upcoming in-person or digital events. The conversation doesn't have to end when ISC West does.