Tag: alarm monitoring

HAGERSTOWN, Md.—Dynamark Monitoring, Inc. launched Instant Connect platform, their newest solution in a growing lineup of features and an intuitive, user-friendly way for customers to interact with their alarm. Customers can group chat with their entire contact list, cancel or verify alarms, and even request service, all without the need to download an app.  “Our goal was to create a very intuitive interface that really improved and modernized the customer experience,” Trey...

When I spoke last month to SentryNet's Kurt Erdman and Alain Jamet, national sales manager and vice president of operations, respectively, both characterized their central station as an “activity hub” that would perform the dual task of promoting new technologies and keeping security professionals attuned to broader trends affecting the industry. Given that approach, it's not surprising that the information the company blasts out often reads like a hybrid between a news release and, well,...

TOLEDO, Ohio—Habitec Security, a monitoring company headquartered here, continues to upgrade its robust false dispatch reduction strategy, and internal company metrics show those efforts are working.“We're now closing in on a 57-percent reduction in false dispatches,” John Smythe, president of Habitec Security, told Security Systems News.In 2012, when Habitec first put enhanced call verification in place, it realized a 20-percent reduction in false alarm dispatches. As part of its...

More companies will soon be able to reap the benefits of the Automated Secure Alarm Protocol, as the CSAA moves into its next stage of deployment by extending the program to non-charter members. So far, the 100 CSAA members that have helped fund the program have been able to contract and connect to the system, which is designed to increase the efficiency and reliability of emergency electronic signals form central stations to Public Safety Answering Points, commonly known as PSAPs. In total, 42 companies...

OGDEN, Utah—A dispatcher at AvantGuard helped stop a burglar from entering the home of a subscriber. One night in July, a single mother and her two children were asleep when their burglar alarm sounded. The woman instinctively grabbed her children, deciding to hide with them in the bathroom. Within seconds of receiving the alarm signal, Caitlin, an AvantGuard team member, called the woman and heard a frantic plea to dispatch police. After calling police and relaying the important critical details,...

DALLAS—Boosted by the 2013 Security Networks acquisition, Ascent Capital, the holding company for Monitronics, a provider of home security alarm monitoring services based here, posted net revenue increases of 31.7 percent and 32.2 percent for the three and six months, respectively, ending June 30, according to a press release. “The growth in subscriber accounts reflects the effects of the acquisition of Security Networks, as well as strong performance in the core account generation engine,”...

Security Electronics, a home and business security company based in Muskego, Wis., near Milwaukee, recently purchased the accounts of Milwaukee Dynamic Security, a company headquartered on the north end of the Milwaukee metro area. In a news release from the Davis Mergers and Acquisitions Group, which assisted Milwaukee Dynamic Security in the transaction, Don Larson, founder of Security Electronics, suggested the backyard account purchase will unite a pair of like-minded companies with similar regional...

MUSKEGO, Wis.—Security Electronics, a home and business security company based here, has purchased the accounts of Milwaukee Dynamic Security, according to a news release from the Davis Mergers and Acquisitions group, which assisted Milwaukee Dynamic Security in the transaction. In a prepared statement, Don Larson, founder of Security Electronics, said the move was a “great fit for our company.” “We both are in the same central monitoring facility and use much of the same...

LONGMONT, Colo.—A main effect of the digital transformation sweeping the industry has been to make companies think differently about how to use and organize information. On the central station side, effective and timely use of information can make the difference between a better or worse outcome.It's within this discussion that a tool like Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, can look like a difference maker, both for central stations and subscribers, Tim Auen, director of mobility products...

Tech publication Wired magazine may not focus too closely on alarm monitoring or residential security, but it does devote a good deal of ink to assessing network security threats, no matter what the context. Just last month a writer for the magazine, Mat Honan, sketched a funny, dystopian picture of the connected home in revolt, commandeered by wayward hackers on some perverse quest for Internet notoriety. Identifiable only by screen names evoking bad cyberpunk movies, these lonesome code junkies...