Moving With the Times

Monitoring today doesn’t mean what it did a few short years ago. There are many more types of monitoring than ever before, but unfortunately, doing more — often by use of the internet, cloud or other means of porting into a client’s network — brings significant risk, both to the client and to the monitoring center itself.

In this year’s cover story, “Cyber & Network Security for Central Stations,” author Deborah O’Mara explores the various techniques central stations are employing to keep their facilities safe — both from a technology and training standpoint. “Cyber security for the central station is an expensive endeavor that requires continuous process improvement to proactively identify threats that are continually changing with the rising sophistication of hackers or those with malicious intent,” she writes. Read more beginning on page 10.

In Designing Spaces, author Maggie McFadden Shein discusses the more physical side of changing with the times. What does the modern monitoring space look like? She speaks with several monitoring and operations centers that have recently remodeled or that are going through the process to see what was most important to them, and what the newest trends look like. Read more on page 16.

Evolving with the times is also the theme of this year’s column by The Monitoring Association, written by the newly appointed executive director, Celia Besore. “Through leadership changes, membership fluctuations, and engagement campaigns with successes (and yes, setbacks), we never lost sight of our goal to serve our members and help them advance their businesses,” she writes. See page 8 for a few highlights of their recent efforts.

For monitoring centers — as for every part of the security industry — one of the most challenging changes is onboarding and training new employees. SDM Monitoring Today spoke with Affiliated Monitoring’s Carmelo Mosca, this year’s TMA Monitoring Center Manager of the Year Excellence Award winner about how he finds, and keeps the right employees on page 22.

Finally, don’t miss the column on the impact the TCPA is having on the monitoring industry by Lou Fiore on page 6 or PPVAR’s Larry Folsom’s take on how monitoring companies can blaze the trail to video verified response. We hope you enjoy this special supplement!

As the Editor-in-Chief of SDM, Karyn Hodgson is responsible for the overall editorial direction of the magazine, its supplements, e-newsletters and website. She works with the SDM editorial staff to develop content that helps security dealers and systems integrators operate successful businesses. Karyn represents SDM at trade shows and conferences, and directs exclusive research studies such as the SDM Industry Forecast. She also manages SDM’s Dealer of the Year and Systems Integrator of the Year Award programs. Karyn has an MSJ in Journalism (magazine publishing) degree from Northwestern University, and more than 25 years’ experience writing for and about the security industry. Contact Karyn with article ideas.