South African security company Aura says it has shifted from reacting to crimes to preventing them entirely, using large datasets and predictive AI models to forecast criminal activity before it occurs and automatically dispatch security personnel to those locations.
Aura consolidated hundreds of independent armed response and medical emergency service providers across South Africa into a single network, allowing it to collect extensive real-world data on criminal incidents and emergency events.
“We really have a huge amount of data,” said Justin Suttner, Aura general manager for Sub-Saharan Africa. He said the company is working to process that data to make increasingly accurate predictions of criminal events in cities across the country before they happen.
“We still have a way to go, but what we can predict now versus what we could predict two to three years ago is crazy,” he said. “We have the ability now on our platform, which is where we’re going to take it, to say that, at this time, at this place, at this point in the month and in this location, we believe something’s going to happen.”
When a prediction is made, Aura’s system automatically dispatches real security company agents to those locations to catch criminal activity as it unfolds or prevent it entirely. Suttner believes the more data the system is fed, the stronger its predictions will become — further driven by advances in AI technology globally. He framed Aura’s predictive strategy as similar to medicine. “It’s as simple as that. Treat the symptom. Try and treat the cause.”
Based in Johannesburg, Aura runs a nationwide platform integrating real-time information from its private security and emergency medical services partners, mobile app users, and commercial and surveillance partners. Its teams can monitor criminal activity, medical emergencies and other incidents in real time, with the system automatically assigning nearby assistance to respond.
Aura began as a personal security company providing app-based panic response for individual users. As its data supply has grown, it has expanded its offerings. In 2023, it moved into what it calls “fixed location verticals” — real-time monitoring and emergency response services for commercial locations and businesses. As with individual incident reporting, Aura’s system automatically detects suspicious activity around commercial premises and dispatches the nearest security provider agent to investigate.
New data from the company shows that commercial crime nearly doubled over the past decade in South Africa, rising from 76,744 cases in 2013/2014 to 143,600 in 2024/2025. Gauteng alone accounted for more than a third of national cases in the most recent quarter. Aura said the growing activity is placing increased pressure on public law enforcement.
Alongside its commercial security services, Aura also offers security escort services it describes as “scheduled services,” protecting personnel and infrastructure in high-risk situations. These range from automated, randomized proactive vehicle patrols to heavily armed escorts for technicians repairing ATMs after a bombing, or security personnel dispatched to a site that has been robbed for several days. A recent client was a telecommunications firm that hired Aura to provide scheduled escorts for technicians working on fibre infrastructure repairs in a high-risk area. “The armed escorting is anything from one person with a 9mm handgun all the way to two, three vehicles that are bulletproof. It just really depends on the scenario,” Suttner said.
