Guardian Protection, twice recognized as Monitoring Center of the Year, announced its 24-hour monitoring centers have attained ANSI/TMA AVS-01 certification, a standardized scoring metric, introduced in 2023, used to report unauthorized human activity (such as a burglary detected by an alarm system) to an emergency response agency. The scoring provides greater situational awareness to first responders and can be impactful in allocating resources.

“Becoming AVS-01 certified reinforces our core belief that effective communication with emergency communication centers (ECCs) is vital to the service we provide our customers,” said Matt Majocka, director, monitoring operations, Guardian Protection. “It not only strengthens our relationship with them, but also with first responders, bringing an even greater sense of confidence to those who rely on us to provide best in class monitoring services.”

Guardian’s monitoring centers will use AVS-01 scoring to report an alarm event as being in one of five categories, helping to facilitate the best type of response by authorities. The category will be communicated to the appropriate ECC, such as a 911 center, in the following way:  

• Alarm Level 0 – No Call for Service
• Alarm Level 1 – Call for Service with limited to no additional information
• Alarm Level 2 – Call for Service with confirmed or ‘highly probable’ human presence with unknown intent
• Alarm Level 3 – Call for Service with confirmed threat to property
• Alarm Level 4 – Call for Service with confirmed threat to life

According to The Monitoring Association, adopting the AVS01 standard can improve public safety outcomes and significantly enhance a security monitoring center’s alarm response processes.

“Our trained monitoring center protection specialists have always provided necessary critical information to ECCs, so the addition of the AVS-01certification will be transparent to our customers, but it has greatly helped to place a framework on the delivery of that information,” Majocka said.

Guardian began preparation to integrate the standard into its operations in Spring 2025, building out the protocol within its monitoring software, training every member on its monitoring center team, and instituting quality assurance (QA) practices, both internally and by an independent QA team. Guardian worked to expand its existing U.L. certification to include AVS-01 certification and received U.L. AVS-01 certification approval in October.