There’s no doubt that ensuring the safety and security of your students, staff, and facilities remains a top priority in 2025. And the landscape of school security continues to evolve, bringing with it a shift towards more integrated, intelligent security systems that not only respond to incidents but also help prevent them.
This month, we’re exploring the 2025 safety and technology trends shaping campus security that every superintendent, business administrator, principal, and leader in education should be aware of.
We’ll examine how these innovations can enhance your existing security protocols, improve emergency response times, and create a safer learning environment.
From advanced entry management systems to comprehensive emergency notification platforms, we’ll provide insights into technologies and strategies that are setting new benchmarks in educational safety, so you can use what you learn to make informed decisions about your district’s security infrastructure.
Secure Vestibules and Visitor Management Systems
From video surveillance to access control, securing the entry points on your campuses is more than a trend, it’s a core priority for the year ahead.
Entryway security is evolving from both a physical and technological perspective. Many schools are choosing to add secure vestibules to their buildings so that the visitor management process remains as safe as possible.
The Partnership Alliance for Safer Schools released a white paper detailing the multi-tier structure for a highly secure vestibule. This approach limits access, helps control the number of visitors in a building at a given time, and provides a space where your staff can verify that the particular visitors in question are allowed to be in the school building.
The secure vestibule system effectively manages visitor entrances. This includes processes related to identity verification and multilayer security reinforced with video surveillance and access control technologies.
This approach can be further strengthened with technology options like Verkada’s secure entry solutions. These solutions include key card systems and mobile access control and offer flexible, customizable, and remotely accessible approaches to making sure your campus stays secure.
Mass Notifications Systems
Another layer of security that will be prioritized by schools across the country this year is mass notification. It’s crucial to ensure that everyone can hear and understand important notifications during emergencies. This includes both the indoor areas of your building and outdoor spaces on your grounds, such as sports fields and parking lots.
For example, Eastern DataComm helped a large New Jersey regional high school district install mass notification systems whose messages and alerts reached across their buildings and grounds. The radio-based solution enabled the installation of speakers and strobe lights across the campus, including outdoor areas. No matter where you are on their campus, vital information reaches you quickly when every moment counts.
Mass notification, as a best practice, should be multimodal in nature. That means a comprehensive system also includes texts, emails, bells, sign boards, and all the integrations that help you reach families, staff, and first responders in the event of a crisis. A tailored approach to mass notification that fits the unique needs of your school population ultimately yields the best possible results to mitigate and alleviate urgent situations.
Customized Building-Level Solutions
Another trend that’s sure to impact learning communities is the drive toward more customized solutions.
District-wide, property perimeter, building perimeter, and interior perimeter solutions have become a commonplace approach for evaluating your building’s layers of protection.
Customized solutions are essential at every level to ensure your campus remains secure. When it comes to building and interior perimeter security, one of the most adaptable options available is the environmental sensor system. Environmental sensor solutions offer an all-in-one approach, addressing health, safety, and security needs while tailoring their functions to meet your specific goals.
For property and parking lot perimeters, custom video surveillance, access control, and even paging and bell systems may be the right fit. Integrating your physical security solutions creates a cohesive security network across your campus.
Complying with Federal and Local Regulations
Adhering to local, state, and federal standards has always been a consideration for schools and districts. But as the world of technology solutions expands, so too have the list of regulations around them. Adhering to these regulations is more vital than ever as educational organizations like yours address cybersecurity threats, regulatory requirements, and the collective needs of your campus.
Making regulatory compliance a focus for this new year is not only a trend in campus security technology, it will become more prevalent for a variety of reasons as well.
In recent years, the ASIS (American Society for Industrial Security International) has been hard at work on its standards, which are expected to be released in the spring of this year. The organization’s proposed American National Standard will focus on the ways educational institutions address their security needs.
We’ve also seen VoIP phone system regulations related to multi-line phone systems with Ray Baum’s Act and Kari’s Law. These regulations are in place to ensure that emergency response personnel have the information they need as quickly as possible and that calls to 911 go through right away without entering a prefix, as so many dated phone systems once required.
As VoIP phone experts, our team can help you select the right solution for you. In one of our customer’s districts, we recognized not only their need to comply with regulations, but also the unique nature of their district population. This allowed us to guide them to a solution that provided for multimodal communication and VoIP integration that not only met legal standards, but ensured all students and staff could respond effectively during an emergency.
And of course, more recently we’ve seen ‘rip and replace’ legislation governing the safety and secure use of video surveillance systems. Adhering to these regulations helps schools and districts protect the privacy and security of students, staff, and visitors, while ensuring they have the most effective video surveillance solutions for their needs.
The goals for those seeking regulatory compliance center around protecting data, reputation, and lives. This includes ensuring adherence to security requirements and avoiding issues with the governing bodies that set the rules and guidelines.
