Singapore’s mature security market is driven by flagship projects, AI adoption, and cyber-physical convergence, positioning the city as Southeast Asia’s security hub.
Singapore is more than just a smaller market in the dynamic APAC region, where many countries promise growth potential of about 10 percent annually for physical security and IoT devices.
As the regional hub for international companies that boasts world-class infrastructure, the city state has a much more mature security market than its regional peers, with high-margin flagship projects requiring the latest technology—easily making up for what Singapore is lacking in volume projects.
“We’re seeing a strong shift toward intelligent, data-driven security systems. Singapore clients are looking for solutions. They understand the power of AI,” said Fei Zixuan, GM, Hikvision Singapore. “At Hikvision, we are advancing this transformation through our Guanlan AI large-scale model, which integrates computer vision, multimodal perception and knowledge reasoning.”
The Singapore market is to a larger extent technology-driven than other markets. Full integration is key across Singapore’s most important verticals.
Dominant verticals
As a space-constrained city state, Singapore doesn’t have a sprawling landscape of security-relevant verticals, such as the manufacturing industries that dominate, for example, Vietnam. Its physical security landscape is instead dominated by the regional HQs of international companies, public infrastructure and transportation hubs, including Singapore Changi Airport. However, Singapore also boasts significant petrochemical industry, concentrated on Jurong Island, which features a fully integrated, island-wide access control infrastructure.
Similarly, Singapore is currently building the Tuas Mega Port, projected to become the world's largest fully automated harbor facility and a massive integration project for security technology.
Data centers play a significant role, too—not unlike elsewhere in the region. In Singapore, however, the government mandates the use of green technology and low emissions in this energy-intensive vertical. As many providers take a holistic approach, security systems, even though they only account for a fraction of the energy used in a data center, are factored into the whole. Efficiency is key, as is low electricity use when it comes to security cameras and access control infrastructures. Increasingly, security systems are also used to monitor the energy use of other systems, making them a key part of IoT deployments.
Public sector facilitates technology adoption
Singapore’s strict requirements for data centers exemplify that the state tends to play an outsized role in Singapore. Unlike in other highly regulated markets, however, the government has long acted as a facilitator of economic activity instead of stifling it through regulation and slowing down processes. Think of this comparison: While new cybersecurity rules for security cameras led to “wait-and-see” freezes in Vietnam and India, Singapore announces changes reliably early and incentivizes compliance. Amendments to Singapore’s Cybersecurity Act implemented in October this year, for example, were rolled out alongside Productivity Solutions Grants, helping especially SMEs to comply.
Being certified in Singapore carries great weight in the region. Companies that demonstrate compliance in Singapore have the edge in high-margin verticals in other markets, as Singapore is seen as the gold standard across Southeast Asia.
Full cyber-physical convergence
A mere buzzword in other markets, cyber-physical convergence has become reality in Singapore, which no longer differentiates between systems that protect organizations from physical threats and systems against cyberattacks.
Edge devices used to protect the perimeter of a corporate campus, for example, are also understood as demarcating their digital perimeter. As such, they need to be hardened against cyberbreach attempts to the same degree as the company’s server room, including edge-to-core encryption and multi-factor authentication, ensuring that a physical breach of a device cannot be used as a digital "backdoor" into the client’s internal network.
A catalyst of this development were various government initiatives. At least since the latest amendment to the Cybersecurity Act, security cameras and other devices installed by businesses above a certain size are classified as “third-party owned critical Information infrastructure," or “3PO CII.” This means, if a bank uses a cloud-based video management system, they are legally responsible for its cybersecurity as if they owned the servers themselves.
For integrators, this has forced a shift from "box-shifting" to "security-by-design," as they increasingly specialize in two domains equally—physical and cybersecurity.
Also in this realm, the involvement of the government has created opportunities for businesses, as well as trust among the public. A
2022 study by the German Konrad Adenauer Stiftung think tank showed that 83% of Singaporeans thought the government handles sensitive personal data “well” or “very well.” Meanwhile, 79% indicated they were concerned when disclosing personal data online, for example during online purchases from private sector websites.
There is little reason to assume much has changed in this regard. Data privacy and cybersecurity awareness is high among Singaporeans, as is trust in the government and the rules it sets.
Home security goes all-in on IoT
Home security plays an outsized role in the city state, with Singaporeans spending significantly more on such devices than their peers in other APAC markets. On the one hand, this reflects that Singapore is simply wealthier, boasting an estimated
GDP per capita of US$92,930 in 2025, which is over 15 times the average of all ASEAN markets combined, as well as over twice as much as Malaysia, the second-wealthiest country in the bloc.
The city state’s homeownership rate of about 90% also contributes to Singaporeans being more willing to invest in their homes than their regional peers.
On the other hand, it might come as a surprise. An IEP study from 2023
ranked Singapore 6th worldwide in “perceived security,” begging the question why Singaporeans continue to spend more every year on security cameras.
The answer is simple. Home security has moved far beyond its core functions in Singapore, into the IoT and smart living space. The main purposes of security systems in Singaporean homes are, for example, elderly care and parcel management. They are no longer about simple monitoring, but about AI-assisted living, creating great opportunities for suppliers of home IoT hard and software.
New opportunities arising in the JS-SEZ
The Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ), formalized early this year, is a strategic collaboration between Singapore and Malaysia to drive cross-border growth and attract global investment.
From the perspective of global firms, the JS-SEZ has birthed a “Singapore-plus” strategy. While manufacturing and data storage move to Johor to take advantage of land and power, command and control remain in Singapore—including cross-border security operations centers (SOCs) set up to monitor sprawling manufacturing and data center assets in the 3,500 sq km zone across the border in Malaysia.
Security manufacturers are obviously upbeat about the prospects in Singapore, as it cements its positions as the regional security hub.
“The Singapore market is booming. The government is investing heavily in commercial and public security projects. As Hikvision we are building bridges, for example between smart city management and critical infrastructure protection,” Fei said.