Whenever a natural disaster or tragedy strikes, many invoke the words of popular children’s television host Fred Rogers, told to him by his mother: “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” For these Monitoring Center Excellence Award Winners, the helpers are in the central station, helping all the time, even when they’re off the clock.

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.

Nine years after its 2011 launch, The Monitoring Association’s (TMA) Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP) service is slowly — but surely — creeping into monitoring centers everywhere.

This year at TMA’s annual meeting in Napa Valley, I led a panel on telecommunication opportunities available through leveraging modern technologies while holding on and winding down older technologies to support legacy systems and communications.

What began as a collective effort on the part of eight forward-thinking security industry leaders on a cold night in 1949 has grown and evolved over seven decades to become The Monitoring Association (TMA), the internationally recognized non-profit trade association that represents professional monitoring companies, security systems integrators and providers of products and services to the alarm industry. 

Since 2006, The Monitoring Association (TMA) has been recognizing the top performers in monitoring with its TMA Monitoring Center Excellence Awards (previously called the Central Station Awards). The Excellence Awards, hosted by TMA and co-sponsored by SDM Magazine, recognize exceptional personnel and monitoring centers in the industry (both TMA members and non-members) that are certified by an approved Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL).

Radius Security and Vancouver Fire is British Columbia’s largest, longest-established fire protection, fire safety and commercial security and monitoring company servicing municipalities in B.C., Alberta and Ontario.

Carmelo Mosca has truly climbed the ranks of Affiliated Monitoring Inc., a Union, N.J.-based monitoring center.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) restricts telephone solicitations (i.e., telemarketing) and the use of automated telephone equipment.