The integration of security processes across multiple dimensions of social life – business, financial, key public infrastructure, schools, homes, domestic and international travel – is giving rise to a new environment of pervasive and inter-connected security. Biometric and Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) technologies promise to make possible pervasive tracking to ensure the safety of both individual people and items of merchandise across multiple environments. What kinds of opportunities will this create for security system vendors?

The region of the world that is attracting the most foreign direct investment is not in fact Asia but Europe. The biggest destination for FDI in the world is not China. The countries in the world which draw the most foreign investments are the USA and Belgium/Luxembourg, followed by China, which is in turn followed very closely by France. Data from the United Nations World Investment Report 2004 demonstrate that the level of FDI flowing into Europe has far exceeded the inflow into China and even the entire Asia-Pacific region. This should be unsurprising give the European Union’s forming the largest bloc of GDP on the globe.