Alarm monitoring is a fast and detailed communication between the security system of your home or premises, and the central station of your security provider. Your control panel registers an emergency event and sends a signal to the central monitoring station, where the corresponding authorities are notified and sent to the place where you have set the alarms.
We want to talk to you about this today, about how an alarm center works, so you can get an idea of how your alarm works in its entirety.
Types of security alarms to protect your properties
The technical details can be slightly different for each security provider, whenever you are going to hire an alarm. The basics of alarm monitoring are similar in any security system. Your system’s control panel is the hub of a network of sensors, which may include the following:
- window or door sensors
- motion detectors
- Tamper sensors in the phone booth
- temperature monitors
- flood sensors
- Smoke detectors
- carbon monoxide detectors
When a system is complete and installed and any of these sensors are activated, a signal is sent to the monitoring station, usually through your phone line, GPRS, 2G, 3G, 4G, ADSL, fiber.
How does my alarm start to work?
When one of the previous sensors starts to work because it sees something suspicious, the chain begins, first of all it sends a signal to the control panel:
- The first signal sent by your control panel will alert the monitoring staff at the central station, who will call to advise and confirm if it is a real emergency or a false alarm. If you don’t respond, the alarm monitoring service contacts the appropriate agency to send emergency personnel to your address.
- Some security systems offer additional features, such as immediate alarms, which are not dependent on a confirmation call, or silent alarms (also called duress alarms) that do not alert intruders to the SOS call.
- Your home or store security system sends critical information to the alarm monitoring center, including account identification (to access your address and contact information) and the type of sensor that was triggered.
With these you will be able to better understand how the alarm you have installed works.
Operation of the alarm center
An Alarm Reception or Monitoring Center is a monitoring and control center, where the alarm signals emitted by a security system are received and monitored. Therefore, when an unwanted intrusion occurs in a space protected by a security system, the immediate response is to activate an alarm. This system may not be connected to a central office, and communicate the alarm only to the customer or activate only an audible warning, for example.
But in this post we refer to the facilities that do have a reception center that is responsible for managing that alert. The alarm reception center operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When an alarm jump occurs, a security protocol is activated, which may include notifying the security forces, the private security service or the client.
The ARC receives alarm signals from different security elements such as surveillance cameras, infrared barriers, fiber optic detector cables, motion detectors, etc. These systems detect the anomalous presence of a potential intruder and send the notification to the central in question, where the staff that attends to it will activate a response to that emergency situation following an established protocol.
The importance of security centrals in perimeter security systems
Perimeter security systems are designed to cover the security of large areas, which have a large perimeter and where it is difficult to fully control with physical surveillance. These perimeter surveillance systems can coexist with physical or non-physical surveillance.
On many occasions, clients cannot contract permanent physical surveillance and seek remote surveillance contracted with a CRA, which relies on the perimeter security system to secure the facilities.
In other cases, there is real physical surveillance, but since it is such a large area to cover, it needs the support of electronic equipment that forms a perimeter security system.
The alarm receiving center is an essential complement to any security system. When an alarm occurs, it is important that it is managed quickly and professionally by an experienced company with the necessary means to provide a correct response.
The alarm that does not warn anyone or only warns the customer does not help much, because it cannot give an adequate response and because it can be dangerous. The advice is to involve professionals who decide if they have to call the security company, the state security forces, the maintenance service or the owner when necessary.
