Monitoring

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Central station redundancy and its significance is essential to understand. A select group have maintained redundancy over the years, although UL hasn’t mandated redundancy until recently.

Traditional security and the smart home are the same. There — I’ve said it. Our industry likes to see them as different, but for someone growing up now, without any preconceptions of alarm systems, they all just look like a lot of gadgets for the home.  So what does this mean for the smart home and traditional alarm monitoring?

When I first entered the security industry in 1973, alarm communications were performed by Direct Wire, McCulloh and some high security applications using voice-grade telephone lines configured in “open window” and later “closed window” bridges.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents numerous unprecedented challenges to the monitoring industry and those with a stake in the protection services it provides. Not the least of these is operating in a regulated environment, under standards that did not fully anticipate the impact of public health mitigations.

At last, 2021 is here — I can’t be the only one happy to leave 2020 in the dust! The year brought so many changes to the business of monitoring, our heads haven’t stopped spinning. With the COVID-19 pandemic, and the unemployment numbers that unfortunately came along with it, providing peace of mind has never been more important.

Micro Key Solutions has partnered up with AvantGuard — a provider of wholesale alarm monitoring, to provide alarm dealers with the ultimate ‘link to success.’ 

Communication — both with end users and emergency personnel — has always been an essential part of any monitoring business. The methods through which monitoring centers communicate, though, have become incredibly varied.

What do termites, diamonds and security have in common? All three are components of the history of this year’s SDM Dealer of the Year. Sonitrol began when Al Cronk, a police officer, was interested in verifying alarms using audio; Bob Baxter invented microphones to detect termites in trees.

The DICE Corporation recently announced that it would be rebranding itself as “The New DICE” as a part of the company’s future roadmap, kicking off a multi-million-dollar investment in new technologies, products and services. A press conference the company hosted last week provided more details on the initiative.

Emergency24, an Underwriters Laboratory-listed central station that writes its own proprietary software, and BluePoint Alert Solutions, a company that focuses on hardware installation, training and implementation of Rapid Emergency Response Systems (RERS), have partnered to leverage each companies’ capabilities to minimize the impact of crisis situations, such as an active shooter event or natural disaster.