Monitor This!

In the age of an imminent POTS sunset, Security Systems News has looked at communications pathway alternatives. We’ve looked at broadband and we’ve looked at GSM. We’ve looked at alternatives. In our rooting around and scooping we uncovered some possible disturbing truths about the current GSM communications standard. We wrote about it and we conducted [...]

Just got an email (via my colleague Martha) from Shane Sumrow over at The Margulies Communications Group.
Looks like SIAC’s stepping up its social media networking endeavors in its efforts to combat false dispatches.
I can vouch for the veracity of the stepped up LinkedIn presence, as I just got linked to SIAC’s Stan Martin this morning. [...]

An Aug. 24 story from USA Today reports police nationwide are beginning to curtail response to certain types of calls they view as lower priority. The story doesn’t deal specifically with alarms or false alarms or the security industry, but it does list among the demoted call types burglary and theft.
The story mentions three municipalities [...]

I was going through my email this morning and came across a call for help from Mark Simpson, manager of central station alarm monitoring services at San Francisco-based RFI Security. RFI Security is a “diversified multi-systems integrator that has been designing, installing, servicing and monitoring, technology-driven security and fire/life safety solutions for over thirty years.”
Anyway, [...]

I blogged a little while ago about the possible entrance of Verizon into the security and PERS spaces. Granted, I’ve received no press from Verizon on the matter, but why else would they be co-sponsoring the upcoming mHealth summit? And why else would I have shared an ESX elevator and a cryptic conversation in Pittsburgh [...]

I wrote in this blog a while back about cloud storage–a developing thing in the security industry–and what it is and is not. I’ve also written about other types of storage. Storage is a big thing in security, especially when you start talking about video monitoring firms and the massive amounts of cached video data [...]

I got an email from my friend Ty Davis over at Southwest Dispatch recently. Apparently he’s moving from Southwest Dispatch, where he is a VP of operations, to Life Alert in California. Ty, who has been with Southwest since 1996, will be making his move west in September.
Most recently for us here at SSN, Ty [...]

I got a call from CSAA VP of marketing and programs Celia Besore this morning. She called to say goodbye.
I was like, “huh?” See, I didn’t get the latest issue of Signals (for some reason), dated Aug. 10, in which Celia’s future plans were revealed. Anyway, I assured Celia that had I known I’d’ve called [...]

I wrote a story recently on Sonitrol Security (AKA Kimberlite) and their impressive apprehension numbers for the month of July.
I got a comment on the story from Jose Chavarria (Iverify?). He asked the very good question what the true measure of success was: apprehending people or deterring crime in the first place. A very good [...]

Just got a press release announcing yet another enlistee in the CSAA Five Diamond club. Congrats to Woburn, Mass.-based Niscayah. I’ve written plenty about the Five Diamond process and, as you know, have even undergone some of the training required of operators at Five Diamond centrals.

There are approximately 2,700 U.S.-based central stations that interact [...]