Over 35 years in business, we’ve helped other businesses help secure their property using our full array of equipment and strategies. Businesses have unique security concerns due to the amount of time they are vacant. This means that most business owners look for creative ways to stay in the secuirty “loop” at all times. Therefore, we aim to create efficient and detailed alerts to keep you connected to your business at all times. In this post, we share how we create these important security alerts for your business.
First, we’ll look at alerts created by your existing security system. A monitored security system creates a central station response to any alarm activation at your property. In our opening section, we’ll review this feature, and even look at a couple non burglary-related security alerts you can receive through your security system. From there, we’ll shift our focus to the notifications created by installing cameras around your property. This service has grown quite a bit in popularity and effectiveness over the last decade, due in part to the way they alert you to activity and allow you to review footage to keep eyes on your building at all times. Finally, we’ll also review how access control systems can help you track activity at your own commercial space. Now, let’s get started by reviewing your security system-related business alert options.
Alarm Monitoring-Related Alerts
As we pointed out earlier, installing a monitored alarm can create a notification for both you and the police if you experience a burglary. Upon receiving an alarm signal, our central station operators call you and, if necessary, dispatch the local authorities. However, our alarms create alerts for events other than a break-in attempt as well. In this section, we’ll look at a couple of these security alerts for your business. Let’s dive in with a review of how adding environmental sensors can add this security for you.
Water sensors, such as this model by Winland, can be connected to a home security system to alert you to potential environmental danger.
Weather-Related Notifications
We surprise many of our comercial customers by offering a variety of sensors to help customers track environmental conditions at their property. Sensors designed to detect freezing, flooding, and high or low temperatures keep business owners informed if an environmental condition threatens a property. We connect these sensors to the security system on site. This creates communication from your alarm to our central station if the sensors detect an issue. In turn, this leads to a phone call alerting you to any issues that these sensors detect.
Of course, quick detection of a flood, frozen pipes, or dangerous temperatures in your building could lead to addressing the issue in time to minimize damage rather than having to perform expensive and extensive repairs. Furthermore, adding these sensors often carries an unexpected bonus. Our post on Smart Security Tips to Save You Money pointed out that installing certain security products can trigger an insurance discount. In many cases, adding environmental sensors lowers insurance rates. The combination of additional security and lower insurance payments make adding these sensors a no-brainer for many customers. Next up, we’ll see how we can add security alerts for your business with our Alarm.com cellular service.
Alarm.com Notifications
For the past several years, we’ve used our cellular dialer powered by Alarm.com as our preferred alarm monitoring method. Cellular monitoring service allows us to monitor customers’ security systems without the use of traditional phone lines. This allows us to offer unique security benefits. For starters, our Alarm.com customers can cancel their phone service without affecting their monitoring. This is because cell dialers use cellular communication, rather than phone lines, to monitor your alarm.
Additionally, our cell dialer has the ability to communicate directly with your smartphone. When we discuss “interactive alarm monitoring,” we are referring to this unique connection between your phone and your alarm. This connection allows you to control your alarm remotely with the Alarm.com app. The ability to arm and disarm your security system from anywhere at any time alone adds tremendous security. Moreover, this service allows you to create customizable alerts for any alarm actvity. For example, alarm activations and system arming and disarming alerts add quite a bit of value for our commercial customers.
Moreover, you can even create notifications for alarm events that do not happen. For example, you may expect someone to show up, disarm the security system, and open your business every morning by 9am. Alarm.com allows you to receive an alert if your alarm stays armed past the expected opening time. At that point, you can call the employee you expected to show up to inquire about their whereabouts.
Using Surveillance to Monitor Your Property
Adding cameras to any property adds an extremely important security upgrade. Burglar alarms may help chase burglars away, and access control systems can also help keep the wrong people out of your business. However, neither of these security measures allow you to review footage of any suspicious activity on your property. Commercial surveillance provides your with security for you.
When we install cameras, we create the ability to review both recorded and live video footage. For starters, we connect your cameras to a recorder that captures recorded video 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We can provide you with as much storage capacity as you desire for future viewing! We also connect this recorder to your businesses’ network. This gives you the ability to log in to your cameras’ footage in real time using any internet-connected device. Therefore, you can check in on your property at any time for added security and peace of mind.
Furthermore, and more relevant to this post, you can also create live alerts when your cameras detect motion on specific areas of your property! For example, if you wanted an alert when someone approaches a room with a safe, you can receive a live video clip if and when this happens. The same goes for receiving alerts as cars or passersby approach your business at unexpected times of day or night. This ability to check in on your business in real time or after a security-related event has made cameras perhaps the fastest-growing security measure over the last several years. Let’s take a look at one more type of system to help create security alerts for your business.
Access card readers, such as this one made by AMAG, help business owners control and track access to their entire property.
Door Activity Alerts Through Access Control
Access control systems represent one of the most effective means of controlling and tracking access to your property. These systems utilize electronic locking hardware to operate specific doors within a business. Rather than using a key at these doors, users approach a keypad or a credential reader and present either a code or a physical credential such as a card or fob. Users who present an approved credential will then be able to open the door after the reader interacts with the door’s electronics to unlock it. You can create schedules that customize credential holders’ access to your building to limit permission to specific days and times if desired.
In addition to controlling access to certain doors, access control systems include software that tracks access as well. Every time an employee approaches an access door, it creates a time-stamped event that you can view on a computer by logging in to your access control system. Furthermore, it allows you to see if anyone tries to enter doors in your business that they should not attempt to enter.
For example, if employees without the necessary permission attempt to use their credentials to enter your business during a time that you do not want them to do so, the system will both deny access and “flag” this event. At that point, you can follow up on this alert to see which employee attempted this breach. The flexibility and security these systems provide make them an extremely popular addition to any complete commercial security plan.
Putting Our Security Alarts for Your Business to Work for You
We hope that this post helps you create the security alerts you need to create security and peace of mind for your business application. Additionally, we also encourage you to contact us with any questions the material here may raise for you. We will happily answer any and all of your security-related inquiries. Moreover, we also invite you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We offer complimentary security audits and equipment quotes to both new and existing customers alike. Together, we can create a complete security plan to keep your business — as well as everyone on it — as safe and secure as possible!