Why all security vendors sound the same — and how not to

With GSX less than a month away and ISC East right behind it, the security industry is in full trade show planning mode. Booths are built, signage finalized, lead-gen plans refined. The problem is, once the aisles fill up, most of those booths will blur together. “AI-powered.” “Next-gen.” “Unified end-to-end solutions.” By the third aisle, you start to wonder: are these companies selling access control systems and video platforms, or just auditioning for a game of buzzword bingo? I sometimes wonder: if we swapped the logos on these booths, would anyone even notice? Probably not. Which is precisely the problem.
 

When everybody sounds the same

The physical security and IT industries are full of smart companies doing important work. But if you judged them solely by their websites or trade show booths, you’d never know it.
 
Take a look through vendors’ websites and you’ll find the same language repeated again and again: “digital transformation,” “intelligent edge,” “cloud-ready,” “next-level analytics.” These terms are meant to showcase innovation, but overuse has stripped them of meaning. Buyers end up asking the most basic of questions: What does this company actually do?
 
This is more than just a marketing annoyance. When your differentiation is buried under a pile of jargon, trust suffers. If you can’t explain your solution clearly, why should a customer believe you can solve their actual problem?
 

The AI effect: More words, less meaning

Enter Chat, Claude, and Gemini, the eager, straight-A students of corporate jargon. These tools are great at producing clean, grammatically perfect paragraphs. The problem is, they do it without judgment or context. Type in, “write a press release about our new platform,” and AI will happily hand you 400 perfectly-written words of “innovative, cutting-edge, next-gen, end-to-end” content.
 
What none of them will do is ask the questions that matter: What makes this different? What pain points does it solve? Why should anyone actually care?
 
So yes, the AI chatbots can generate well-written words, but they can’t generate an authentic voice. And a voice (of the human kind) is what your customers are desperate to hear.
 

Why we fall back on buzzwords

If you’ve ever been guilty of relying on jargon (and haven’t we all?), you know why it happens:
 

• The desire to sound smart. We believe jargon signals authority. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.)
• The pressure to conform. If everyone else is talking about “digital transformation,” how can we not?
• Fear of simplicity. Some think plain language makes them look less professional, when in reality, it makes them sound more credible.
• It feels safe. Everyone else is saying “AI-driven,” so we do, too.
• It avoids specifics. When you’re not ready to commit to measurable claims, “future-proof” feels easier than “reduced false alarms by 40%.”

 
But the unintended consequence can be tough on your bottom line: when everyone says the same thing, customers simply stop listening.
 

OK, but what about SEO?

Using the “right keywords” used to help with SEO. But here’s the reality: people aren’t searching the way they once did. SEO is for Google, and Google is no longer where most of us start. Increasingly, buyers and researchers turn to large language models like ChatGPT.
 
These models don’t rank sites based on keyword density. They feed on authentic, human-generated content that has been published and cited in credible third-party outlets: news sites, trade publications, analyst reports, podcasts, reviews. That means your PR footprint, not your keyword stuffing, is what determines whether your company’s name shows up in the answers LLMs deliver.
 
Bottom line: consistent mentions in trusted publications keep brands visible and relevant as traditional search fades.
 

How to stand out (without inventing a new acronym)

So how do security and IT vendors cut through the noise? Not by leaning harder on the buzzwords, but by doing something more difficult: speaking in a way that’s plainspoken, relatable, and meaningful.
 
1. Cultivate a voice with a pulse
A sentence like “we reduced false alarms by 40%” will always beat “we leveraged AI-driven anomaly detection to drive operational efficiency at scale.” One is measurable, relatable, and credible. The other sounds like it came straight from a Silicon Valley pitch deck.
 
2. Tell stories, not specs
Most buyers don’t wake up in the morning craving “edge-processing cameras with embedded analytics.” They care about outcomes. Did your solution help a school respond faster during an emergency? Did it make compliance audits easier for a bank? Did it save a city millions in operating costs? That’s what matters.
 
3. Publish thought leadership consistently
And no, “thought leadership” is not code for product brochures dressed up as blog posts. Share something useful: explain new privacy laws, walk through the realities of hybrid cloud, or unpack what AI can (and can’t) do in investigations. If your content makes your audience smarter, they’ll keep coming back for more.
 
4. Get outside perspective
Every company drinks its own Kool-Aid. Sometimes it takes an outside partner, a good PR agency, an editor, or even just a brutally honest colleague to point out that your “integrated, scalable, best-of-breed” message doesn’t actually say anything.
 
5. Embrace imperfection
Not every message needs to be polished within an inch of its life. Sometimes the most memorable content is the one that sounds a little conversational, personal, anecdotal. It feels human.
 

A simple test for credibility

Here’s my personal rule of thumb:

• If you can measure it (“reduced incident response time by 30%”), it’s credible.
• If you can tie it to compliance or standards (“meets NDAA requirements”), it’s useful.
• If it sounds like a buzzword salad (“next-gen, future-proof, best-in-class”), cut it.
   

This is especially true in the security industry, where buyers are under pressure to justify every penny they spend. If your value prop can’t survive the CFO test, you’re in trouble.
 

Why this matters now

The security industry is in the middle of one of its biggest transitions in decades. Cloud deployments, the ethics of AI, tighter data privacy rules, and escalating cybersecurity threats are changing how organizations think about physical security. These are serious, high-stakes conversations. They require clarity, not clichés.
 
The companies that will stand out are the ones that explain, educate, and engage with authenticity. They’re the ones willing to admit when things are complicated, and to offer real guidance instead of polished slogans.
 
Those that don’t? They’ll blend into the background, one “best-of-breed, end-to-end solution” at a time.
 
Veronique Froment is Vice President of Strategic Accounts at Bubble Agency.