Archive: July 2009

YARMOUTH, Maine—Summer-model sales companies and door-to-door salespeople have been in the news quite a bit lately, with demands for a code of ethics and industry-initiated law suits against individual door-to-door salespeople dominating headlines. To see what its readers thought, Security Systems News conducted an opinion poll from late July through early August. Is the summer-model legitimate? Is a code of ethics necessary to regulate door-to-door salespeople? What has the impact of the summer-model...

Security is all about protecting lives and assets, detecting intrusion and restricting access. More and more traditional intrusion alarm companies are seeing the value of adding managed services, and many are saying one of the best managed services to tack on is access control. But what does it take to start managing a client's access control needs? What is the return on investment? Is managed access control one more added-on RMR driver, or should it be something upon which you exclusively focus? According...

While managed access control may be one of the fastest growing pieces of the security industry, there are (as for managed video) many different definitions of that term. Are you doing all of your client's badging and card issuance? Is the head-end at your location or theirs? Some companies have gone a different route, however, choosing to productize and brand their particular style of managed access so they can both sell it more effectively and allow dealers to resell it. Perhaps the hottest form...

CARROLLTON, Texas—Open Options is now the first North American access control manufacturer to become a licensed partner of LEGIC Identsystems, a maker of contactless smart card technology based in Zurich. Though it has a large customer base in Europe, this agreement is the first piece of a new focus for LEGIC on the North American marketplace. For Open Options, “it positions us to be in a good place to offer different solutions to our customers,” said Brent Doherty, director of...

TAMPA, Fla.—SureView Systems and DICE Corporation on July 30 announced an integration between their two automation platforms. The integration allows central stations to utilize the advanced video monitoring features of Immix while updating the alarm and history information into the DICE database. DICE president Cliff Dice said the integration will benefit users of the integrated solution and could very well set a trend of more industry-wide integrations. “A lot of my competitors don't...

WORCESTER COUNTY, Md.--A story from delmarvanow.com reports that county commissioners in Worcester County, Md. have voted in a new false fire alarm ordinance. To decrease the number of false alarms to which fire fighters and Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers respond, the Commissioners unanimously adopted Bill 09-3 (Public Safety—Nuisance Alarms) on June 16, a law that will become active on Aug. 1. Bill 09-3 adds a new section to the Fire Prevention Code of Worcester County to establish...

FLUSHING, Mich.—A new false fire alarm ordinance slated to go before the Flushing City Council for final approval on Aug. 10 could end up costing offenders $1,000, and—according to one industry professional—could be the start of a trend. The ordinance had its first reading and approval at the July 13 city council meeting and, if approved at its August meeting, will take effect around the beginning of September. The proposed ordinance will impose the hefty citation beginning with...

SPRINGFIELD, Mass.—As part of a wide-ranging interview about Smith & Wesson's plans for the security industry, company CFO Bill Spengler made it clear that the company is not just dipping its toe into security with its buy of USR, a perimeter security specialist S&W purchased earlier this month. “S&W is a firearms company with a very long history,” Spengler said. In the last five years, he said, the company has broadened its offerings within the firearms industry, moving from being...

To the editor: As an executive of a rapidly growing summer sales company in Orem, Utah, I can not help but to get discouraged with some of the remarks and polls taken by SSN. Is there an ethics issue with certain individuals? Yes. However, I think if members of the alarm industry understood the amount of effort and money directed towards doing everything we can to ensure that we do not have such individuals making a negative impact on the ethics of the alarm industry then the ideas and thoughts would...

BUFFALO, N.Y.—While ADT and others have called recently for the creation of a new industry code of ethics for door-to-door alarm salesman, Tim Creenan this week urged the industry to take a look at IQ Certification, saying it provides guidelines and enforcement rules for alarm company sales people. Further, it provides a kind of “seal of approval” for companies that do follow ethical sales procedures. “The whole premise is that an IQ certified company will stand out from the...