Who's Watching Your Home? The Future of Home Security

What does your security actually do for you?

We're pulling out of the driveway, everyone is finally buckled in, and the question hits me: Did we close the garage? I've had that moment a hundred times. In a full house, somebody is always the last one out, and it's rarely the person who checks.

So before you read any further, answer this honestly. What does your security system actually do for you right now? Not what the box says it can do. What it does on a Tuesday night while you sleep, or on a Saturday when the whole family is three states away.

Then the harder question: who is watching when you're not?

For most of us, the honest answer is "my phone." A camera sends an alert, it lands next to forty other notifications, and we look at it hours later. Rocket Media has worked alongside security companies since 2003, and in those 23 years, the technology has changed much faster than our answer to that question.

So let me dream a little and paint a picture of where this is heading. Then I'll tell you where it actually stands today.

A Saturday night in 2035

It's a fall Saturday in 2035. We're 1,000 miles from home for a football game, and the house is empty for the first time in months.

4:12 p.m. The last car leaves the neighborhood. The house notices. Phones are gone, the garage door is down, and nobody has moved inside for twenty minutes. It arms itself, nudges the thermostat up a few degrees to save energy, and turns on a couple of lamps on a schedule that looks like a family at home.

9:15 p.m. A sharp crack in the kitchen. A year ago, that would have been an alert on my phone. Tonight the system listens, compares it to everything it has learned about this house, and files it away: the ice maker dumping a load. No alert. Nobody bothered.

11:03 p.m. The water meter sees something it doesn't like. Water is flowing, slowly and steadily, in a house where nobody is home to run it. A supply line behind the washer has a pinhole leak. The system closes the main valve, sends me one calm message, and puts a plumber on the schedule for Monday morning. A two-dollar fix instead of a ruined floor.

1:20 a.m. A thermal sensor in the attic flags a junction box running hot. The panel cuts power to that one circuit. A small drone lifts off its dock in the hallway, flies to the attic access, and looks. No smoke, no flame. A real person at the monitoring center reads the AI's summary, reviews the drone footage, and calls my phone. "Mr. Kalkman, everything is under control. We cut that circuit and we'd recommend an electrician look at it this week."

2:47 a.m. Someone walks up the driveway, trying car door handles. Before he reaches the porch, the lights come up and a voice speaks from the doorbell: you're on camera, and you're being watched right now. At the monitoring center, an operator has already seen him on video. Because the alarm is verified, it goes to police as a priority call, not one more maybe. He's gone before he touches the house.

7:30 a.m. I wake up in a hotel and read one message: "Quiet night. Three things handled. One needs you."

Across town that same night, a four-legged robot walks its rounds through a client's warehouse. It reads gauges, checks that doors are shut, and catches a battery charger running hot before it becomes a fire.

Notice what I didn't do all night: I didn't watch anything. Something, and someone, did it for me.

Now the reality check

Most of that night already exists in some form. It just isn't in one house yet, and the flashiest pieces are the furthest away.

Still not in your home

• Indoor security drones. Ring announced its Always Home Cam in 2020 at $249.99. Five years later, in September 2025, it still hadn't been released to the public, and its invite-only program appeared to be paused. (ts2.tech)

• Home robots on watch. Amazon shut down Astro for Business in 2024, and Samsung's Ballie has been announced and re-announced since 2020. (Digital Trends)

Working on commercial sites first

• Outdoor patrol drones. Sunflower Labs started with a backyard drone for homes. Its Beehive drone-in-a-box now goes to commercial partners, including ADT. (DroneLife)

• Robot dogs on patrol. Boston Dynamics' Spot runs night patrols at a Kia plant with a thermal camera and lidar, spotting people, open doors and fire hazards. (Engadget)

• Buildings run as one system. Honeywell is showing an AI-enabled setup where video, access control, fire detection, and building systems work as one platform. (SecurityInfoWatch)

Arriving now

• AI helping the monitoring center. Centers use AI to filter out irrelevant motion so operators can focus on real events. One vendor case study claims an 85% drop in false alarms. (SDM, SDM case study)

• One connected home. Resideo's brands span air, safety, security, water, and energy, and it says its new integrated security platform reaches general release in the second half of 2026. (SecurityInfoWatch, Nasdaq)

In homes today, through a professional

• Cameras that know a person from a shadow. Resideo added AI Smart Search to First Alert CX4 cameras at ISC West 2026. DMP's VUE Plus cameras run analytics on the camera itself, tied to the alarm panel. (Security Systems News, SDM)

• Video-verified alarms. DMP sends video with an alarm so the monitoring center can confirm it's real before calling the police. (DMP)

Here's the pattern I see. The drones and robot dogs are real, but they live in factories and commercial sites first, where the math works. The quiet stuff is what's in homes today: cameras that understand what they see, alarms verified with video, and sensors that talk to each other. That quiet stuff is where the 2035 night actually starts.

Why this matters more than it used to

The biggest threat to your home probably isn't a burglar. Insurance data says it's water and fire.

Fire is rarer, but it is getting more expensive. The average non-catastrophe homeowners' fire claim reached $173,111 in 2024. That's why the leak sensor and the connected smoke detector belong in the same conversation as the door sensor.

The old pieces still work, too. In a survey of 422 incarcerated burglars, about 60% said an alarm would send them to a different target (UNC Charlotte; the study was funded by an alarm industry foundation). And NFPA research found the risk of dying in a home fire is 54% lower with working smoke alarms (JBSA, citing NFPA).

The weak link has always been the response. Justice Department figures put false alarms at roughly 94 to 98% of the alarm calls police answer (Security Sales). So an unverified alarm competes with a pile of maybes. A video-verified one is different: police leaders have said verified alarms get the priority response they deserve (Insurance Thought Leadership).

And here's the gap. Parks Associates found 47% of U.S. internet households own some kind of security system or device, but only 19% have a professionally monitored system (SecurityWorldMarket, Parks Associates via AI Journal). Lots of us own the eyes. Far fewer of us have someone behind them.

The hard questions I'm still working through

I love that 2035 night. I'm also not naive about it. Four things keep me honest.

The more a home watches, the more trust matters. In February 2026, Ring ran a Super Bowl ad for Search Party, an AI feature that scans neighborhood cameras for lost dogs. The backlash was fast, and within days Ring ended a planned partnership with police surveillance company Flock Safety (AP via 6abc). A heartwarming ad made a lot of people ask who else is watching. That's a fair question. Before you add any camera, you should know where the video lives, who owns it, and who can ask for it.

Monitoring costs real money, and a lot of people think they don't need it. Average monthly fees for security services run about $54 (Parks Associates via AI Journal). More than 60% of households that monitor their own systems believe DIY keeps them just as safe as professional monitoring (Parks Associates). For some homes, a camera and a phone really is enough. But your phone doesn't verify a break-in and call the police while you're asleep, and it doesn't shut off the water while you're on a plane.

The cool stuff keeps arriving later than promised. Ring's indoor drone has been "coming" for six years. Home robots have been the next big thing since before my youngest could walk. I'm excited about drones and robot dogs, but I wouldn't wait on them to protect my family.

I'm still working out the rules myself. I chair the Standards & Best Practices Committee for the Electronic Security Association's AI Readiness Council. You'd think that means I have this figured out. I don't. The question we keep circling is easy to ask and hard to answer: what should AI be allowed to decide on its own, and when does a person have to step in? Nobody has the full answer yet, me included, and I'd rather say that out loud than pretend.

Three steps you can take this month

You don't need 2035 to get most of that Saturday night. You need three things.

1. Know what your system does today. Walk through it like a stranger would. What sets it off? Who gets notified, in what order? What happens if you don't answer? Write it down. Most people I ask can't answer the third question.

2. Connect the whole house. Security isn't just doors anymore. Add a water sensor or automatic shutoff, connected smoke and CO detectors, and cameras that know a person from a passing car. Ask whether it all works together with your HVAC, plumbing, and electrical, not as five separate apps.

3. Put someone on watch. Pick professional monitoring with video verification, so a real person confirms what's happening, and police treat it as real. When you talk to a provider, ask: Do you verify alarms with video? Who owns my footage, and who can request it? What does the AI decide on its own, and when does a person step in?

The people who make this real

The real guides on that 2035 night aren't the drones. They're the local security dealers who design, install, and monitor these systems, and who answer the phone at 1:20 in the morning. They're backed by companies building the tools behind them: Resideo, whose First Alert and Honeywell Home brands work through a network of about 100,000 professional installers; DMP, whose panels and cameras are built for professional monitoring; and Honeywell, bringing the same connected thinking to commercial buildings. The Electronic Security Association formed an AI Readiness Council in 2025 to help those dealers adopt AI responsibly, and I serve as chair of its Standards & Best Practices Committee.

So here's my ask. Find a licensed local dealer and have one honest conversation about what your home needs. Not a sales pitch. A walk-through. Then decide.

A note for the pros

If you install and monitor for a living, your customer's question has changed. It used to be "is my alarm on?" Now it's "who's watching, and what did they do about it?" Hardware will keep getting cheaper and easier to buy online. What's hard to copy is a verified response, a home connected across trades, and a name people trust with their family's video. Parks Associates put the challenge plainly: the belief that professional monitoring adds nothing needs an answer that is logical and credible (Parks Associates). Write that answer in plain words and put it where homeowners will find it. That's the work Rocket Media has been doing alongside security companies since 2003, and it's never mattered more.

Want more of what I'm learning about AI and the businesses I work alongside? Join the newsletter.