Agentic AI: Revolutionizing Security Ops

tl;dr: Agentic AI and VLMs transform security operations by turning passive video into actionable insights, automating workflows, and improving decision-making. They empower teams to prevent loss, enhance safety, and ensure compliance with precision and efficiency.

Imagine this: thousands of hours of security footage, endless streams of data, and a team of overworked security professionals trying to make sense of it all. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack—if the haystack were on fire and the needle kept moving. Enter Agentic AI and Visual Language Models (VLMs), the dynamic duo that’s turning passive video into proactive action.

Why this matters: Security that works smarter, not harder

Security teams are tasked with preventing loss, ensuring safety, and proving compliance—all while juggling limited resources. The challenge? Video footage is great for hindsight, but rarely helps in the moment. Agentic AI changes the game by creating a closed-loop system that doesn’t just observe, but reasons and acts. It transforms raw footage into measurable outcomes, automating workflows like alerts, tickets, and escalations, and continuously learning to improve.

VLMs take it a step further by combining computer vision with language understanding. They don’t just see what’s happening, they interpret it, explain it in plain language, and provide audit-ready rationales. Think of it as having a security analyst who never sleeps, never misses a detail, and always has receipts.

From footage to action: The operating loop

Here’s how it works:

1. 1. 1. Ingest: Streams are processed under strict retention and privacy policies.
      2. Detect: Relevant events are flagged based on your risk thresholds and SLAs.
      3. Decide: Contextual decisions are made, with humans in the loop for sensitive cases.
      4. Act: Actions are orchestrated via workforce apps, messaging, ticketing, and building systems.
      5. Log: Every intervention is documented with clips, timestamps, and rationales for investigations and audits.

It’s not just about watching—it’s about doing, and doing it with precision.

High-impact use cases: Where the magic happens

Agentic AI and VLMs shine brightest in real-world scenarios. Here are some examples where they’re already making waves:

• • Loss Prevention in Retail: Spot shelf-sweep patterns, bag-switching, and coordinated theft. Discreet alerts with clip evidence and location context help stop organized retail crime in its tracks.
  • Manufacturing Safety: Monitor PPE compliance, unsafe proximity to machinery, and near-miss events. Incidents are auto-logged with annotated frames, driving corrective actions before accidents happen.
  • Healthcare Patient Safety: Detect fall-risk behaviors and unattended patients. Staff are notified with location-aware summaries, all while respecting privacy constraints.
  • Service and Queue Management: Identify growing lines and long wait times. Recommend opening lanes or dispatching associates, then measure the impact on customer satisfaction and conversion rates.
  • Logistics Throughput: Track dock utilization, cycle times, and staging congestion. Suggest reprioritization and slotting changes to improve turns per hour.

These aren’t just hypothetical scenarios, they’re real, measurable improvements that make life easier for security teams and safer for everyone else.

Implementation: What security teams need to know

Before diving in, it’s crucial to set the stage for success:

• • Data Governance: Define retention policies, access controls, and compliant use cases upfront.
  • Accuracy and Bias: Validate models across environments and keep human review for high-risk actions.
  • Edge vs. Cloud: Balance latency, bandwidth, and cost by running lightweight models at the edge when seconds matter.
  • Systems Integration: Ensure seamless connections with VMS, workforce tools, ticketing, and BI platforms.
  • Observability and Audit: Maintain event timelines, clips, and rationales for investigations and continuous improvement.

Prove it: Measuring value with KPIs

The best way to justify investment in Agentic AI? Show the numbers. Tie each use case to measurable KPIs like:

• • Shrink incidents per week
  • Near-miss rate
  • Average wait time
  • Dock cycle time

Start with baselines, run controlled pilots, and quantify the lift with A/B or phased rollouts. Event-level logs and business context make it easy to attribute outcomes to interventions.

Getting started: Crawl, walk, run

The key to success is starting small and scaling smart. Pick one high-signal site and a single use case with clear value. Map out policies and escalation paths before automating, and keep humans in the loop until confidence grows. As the system learns and improves, expand automation and close the loop with feedback that retrains models and refines decision rules.

Done right, Agentic AI and VLMs don’t just watch, they act. They help your team prevent loss, enforce safety, and document compliance with evidence you can trust.

Closing thought

In a world where security teams are stretched thin, Agentic AI and VLMs are the reinforcements you didn’t know you needed. They’re not just tools, they’re teammates, turning video into action and making the impossible possible. And with Dell’s PowerScale storage solutions, you have the scalable, high-performance infrastructure to store, manage, and analyze the massive volumes of video data these systems rely on. Ready to learn more? Visit www.dell.com/powerscale to see how Dell can help you transform your security operations.