Can security guards keep up with agentic AI?
Joshua Parsons
September 13, 2025
For decades, businesses have relied on security guards to protect property and people. But in 2025, relying solely on human security is no longer enough. Rising crime rates, labor shortages, and the speed of modern threats mean guards are stretched thinner than ever. Worse, traditional CCTV monitoring still depends on humans noticing issues after the fact, when it's already too late.
"The future of security is not just about human eyes; it's about agentic AI systems that act in real time."
Challenge 1: Human Guards Have Limitations
A person can only focus on a handful of cameras at once, or during foot patrols or guard patrols, the area they are patrolling. With Quill, our AI can monitor millions of signals simultaneously, across hundreds of thousands of cameras across the world, helping identify key threats.
By the time a guard notices something, the incident may already be underway. With Quill, we're intercepting incidents the moment they begin, at a fraction of the cost.
Challenge 2: CCTV Alone Doesn't Close the Gap
Traditional cameras record incidents, but they don't stop them. In fact, most footage is only reviewed after a theft, break-in, or vandalism has already occurred. That means you're not preventing loss, only documenting it.
With Watchful's Quill AI, we're detecting threats and incidents in real-time, allowing for instant responses from talk-downs, guard call outs or law enforcement.
How is Watchful building for the future?
Agentic AI monitoring combines autonomous detection with expert decision-making capability. Watchful processes 15 million inbound threat signals every week. Our system accuracy for threat detection is 99.9999971%, or in other words, we miss 1 threat for every 35 million detections we receive.
No number of humans can process this many inbound signals, with this level of accuracy.
With our full-stack approach, Cameras, AI, and human crime fighters work together to ensure nothing slips through.
AI takes on the endless watch, while humans validate and escalate critical incidents.
How can Watchful help your business?
With responses faster than ever before, your business safety is completely enhanced. Intrusions are detected in seconds, not minutes, while decisions about how to respond occur concurrently with the processing of your written instructions.
Watchful is completely scalable, with capability to expand across your entire CCTV network without hiring new staff.
Guards will always have a role in security, but in 2025, guards alone can't keep up.
Businesses need systems that are proactive, scalable, and tireless. Watchful delivers agentic AI monitoring that works alongside people to create a new standard in protection.