If you’ve followed this blog at all over the past few years, you know that we highly recommend having your security system monitored. Doing so ensures that you know when your security system detects a potential breach while you are gone. Furthermore, it also lets you know that an alarm emergency will also create a police dispatch. This valuable added security makes alarm monitoring one of the most effective security services available. Furthermore, our preferred method of monitoring provides you with instant alarm alerts anytime your security system status changes. These added notifications keep you directly connected to your alarm at all times. In this post, we explain how you can use Alarm.com alerts to add security.

First, we’ll explain Alarm.com’s products and monitoring services. This background will help you understand the rest of the material in this post. Then, we’ll discuss a couple security-based alerts. These will include both alarm related and non-alarm specific notification options. From there, we’ll also look at how Alarm.com also provides you with smart home capabilities and alerts. Now, let’s dive in with an introduction to Alarm.com security monitoring.

An Introduction to Alarm.com Alerts

In order to monitor a security system, we must create a connection between an alarm and our central station. Traditionally, this involves using a property’s existing phone line to create this communication. Unfortunately, this does not provide the most consistent and reliable form of monitoring. After all, phone lines can go down due to bad weather. Furthermore, burglars often cut their victims’ phone lines before attempting a burglary in order to disrupt alarm monitoring. For this reason, we recommend installing our Alarm.com-powered cellular dialer for alarm monitoring. This dialer creates a consistent, cell network-based path between your alarm and our central station. This keeps your alarm monitored without depending on your phone lines at all.

Moreover, our Alarm.com dialer also adds the benefits of interactive alarm monitoring. We use the term “interactive” to describe a direct connection between your security system and your smartphone. Alarm.com users can arm and disarm their security systems remotely. Furthermore, they can receive text or push alerts based on alarm events and status updates. Finally, we can also connect smart home devices to the Alarm.com dialer. This allows customers to control their smart appliances and receive smart home device-related updates. We’ll spend the rest of this post going over all of these types of alerts in detail. Let’s get started with a look at security-based Alarm.com alerts.

Alarm.com's "Smart Signal" feature open on a smart phone.

The ability to immediately verify or cancel an alarm can lead to a more efficient response to a potential emergency.

Security-Based Alerts

Of course, as a security-related device, most of the alerts customers ask to receive revolve around adding security and peace of mind. In this section, we’ll share the Alarm.com notifications that help us accomplish these goals. First, we’ll focus on alarm event alerts that also let you choose to either confirm or cancel the alarm. Then, we’ll look at some security-based alerts that come as the result of alarm status updates that do not necessarily point to an emergency.

Alarm Event Alerts and Responses

Obviously, detecting a potential intruder remains at the very top of anybody’s list of security priorities. When a monitored alarm detects a threat, a signal gets sent to our central station. From there, a central station dispatcher attempts to call the premises to check in. If necessary, they will then contact the police for emergency dispatch. Finally, they will start calling numbers on a customer-provided call list.

Regardless of whether you monitor your security system through a phone line or a cellular dialer, all of these events will happen in this order upon an alarm. However, our Alarm.com customers also receive a text alert immediately, even before our central station reaches out. At this point, the phone menu pictured above pops up on our customers’ phones to allow them to respond to the alarm. Cancelling the alarm turns their siren off and lets the central station know to “stand down.” On the flipside, verifying the alarm gives the go-ahead to get the police out there. Furthermore, as we discuss in our Best Practices for Creating a Quick Alarm Response, a “confirmed” alarm often encourages a quicker emergency dispatch than a generic alarm call. After all, the police will now already know that their presence is now specifically requested. Let’s now turn our attention to our non-alarm notification options.

Non-Alarm Security Alerts

While actual alarm activations represent the most important Alarm.com alerts you can receive, you also have plenty of other updates you may wish to receive from your system. You have the ability to receive alerts for less pressing, but still important security updates. For example, you will want to know if one of your wireless alarm sensor’s batteries begins to die. Likewise, if your panel loses its connection to our central station, you’ll want to know this as soon as possible as well.

Our most popular non-alarm security notifications have to do with system arming and disarming events. Most of our customers receive a text alert when someone arms or disarms their security system. Furthermore, these alerts also tell you who completed this action, as well as when. Finally, you can also create alerts if an expected arming or disarming events fails to take place. For example, you may expect someone to open your store every day by 8am. If nobody disarms the security system by that time, you will receive a message. The same goes for arming events as well. Perhaps your house gets locked up in the morning at the same time every day. If this does not happen, you can receive an alert if this does not happen. At that point, you can use your phone to quickly address the issue! Next up, we’ll look at some Alarm.com alerts based on smart home appliances.

Smart Home-Based Alarm.com Alerts

Our Alarm.com customers can install smart devices that connect to our cellular dialer’s Z-Wave smart home receiver. The term “Z-Wave” refers to a mesh network providing communication between our Alarm.com dialer and smart home devices that operate on this network. As one of the most popular smart home platforms, Z-Wave technology gives you many options to add smart security devices. Our customers control these smart home appliances with the same Alarm.com app that they use to control their security systems.

For example, these devices include appliances such as Z-Wave light bulbs that you can control remotely to make your home look occupied while you are away. Additionally, Z-Wave keypad locks allow you to let contractors or house sitters into your home without providing a key. Z-Wave thermostats allow you to control your home’s temperature remotely and even create heating and cooling schedules based on your comings and goings. Installing smart cameras around your property can even provide you both live and recorded video footage that you can access on any internet-connected device at any time.

An Alarm.com smart thermostat on a wall

Installing an Alarm.com smart thermostat allows our customers to save energy and money by tracking and controlling their home’s temperature remotely.

In addition to controlling these devices remotely, our Alarm.com customers can also receive alerts about their smart appliances. For example, Z-Wave locks will notify you when someone locks or unlocks the door, as well as the identity of the person involved. Smart thermostats will alert you to extreme temperature changes. This allows you to check for potential HVAC issues quickly. Smart cameras can also send you live alerts upon detecting motion if you so desire. The convenience and security these products deliver make them invaluable in adding security for any property!

Finding the Alarm.com Alerts that Work for You

We hope that this post helps you choose the Alarm.com alerts that work best for you. Additionally, we also hope you will not hesitate to contact us with any security-related questions you may have. We love assisting both existing and prospective customers in their security decisions. Furthermore, we also encourage you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We offer complimentary security audits and equipment quotes for both residential and commercial properties. While on site, we can address any and all of your security concerns. Moreover, we can also make suggestions based on our own observations of your property.

Perhaps you have an alarm now and want to take advantage of some of the alerts mentioned here. Or, maybe you have yet to install a security system and want to make sure you get it right from the beginning. Either way, we are happy to help. We can work with you to secure any type of property against any threat you can think of. Together, we can create a complete security plan to keep your property — and anyone on it — as safe and secure as possible!