When it comes to securing your business, very few security measures work as well as a monitored burglar alarm. These important systems create multiple layers of security. For starters, alarm activation creates a blaring siren response throughout your business. This alerts anyone still on site to the breach, and usually chases the perpetrator away. Furthermore, monitored alarms also create a central station response. In turn, our central station operators can call for a police dispatch if necessary. Our company offers a few options when it comes to creating this monitoring service. In this post, we go into some detail about interactive commercial security monitoring, which adds more power to your business’s alarm monitoring than ever before!
First, we’ll explain the basics behind alarm monitoring. This will include an overview of traditional alarm monitoring, as well as a description of our more modern cellular-dialer based options. From there, we’ll go into detail about the benefits of interactive security monitoring. We’ll begin by explaining the basic alarm functions this type of monitoring opens up for you. Then, we’ll review some of the other security features interactive commercial monitoring provides. Specifically, we’ll look at both smart security and notification-based security solutions. Now, let’s dive in and see how installing a cellular dialer provides next-level alarm monitoring.
Leveling Up Your Alarm Monitoring
As we pointed out earlier, a monitored alarm can call out for help and set in motion a visit from the police upon detecting a burglary. In order to create this response, we must connect your alarm to our central monitoring station. Traditionally, this process involves tying your property’s existing phone lines to your security panel. In turn, this allows your alarm to dial out to the central station upon detecting trouble.
Unfortunately, phone-line based monitoring comes with some serious shortcomings. Since this service relies on a working phone line for its monitoring path, any phone outage effectively negates your alarm monitoring. Of course, events such as severe weather and traffic accidents involving telephone poles can affect phone service. Furthermore, burglars often cut a business’s phone lines before attempting a break-in. This will disable any traditionally-monitored security systems on site.
If you rely on your property’s old-fashioned phone lines for monitoring, you will not experience the most consistent or reliable monitoring available.
For these reasons, we prefer installing a cellular dialer to monitor your security system. These devices, such as our preffered Alarm.com model, monitor your alarm through a cellular network, rather than through phone lines. Therefore, they keep your alarm monitored even when your phone lines fail. In addition to consistent alarm monitoring, cellular dialers also bring about some unique security benefits. Let’s start unpacking these now!
Key Interactive Features
In addition to standard cell-based alarm monitoring, we also offer interactive alarm monitoring services. In this section, we’ll review these services in detail. We’ve broken these features down into a few key categories. Specifically, we’ll focus on your ability to control both your alarm and your smart devices with a smartphone app, before shifting our focus to creating security notifications that work for you. Let’s get started with some important alarm-based benefits of interactive monitoring.
Remote Alarm and Code Control
Having remote control over your alarm adds tremendous security and peace of mind. Everyone has left work to go home and gotten the sinking feeling that they forgot something. Did all the lights get shut off? The doors got locked, right? What about the alarm? Of course, leaving your security system disarmed can put your office — and maybe even your livelihood — at risk.
Unfortunately, this does happen sometimes. Interactive monitoring allows you to leave this fear behind for good. For one, you can always check on your alarm’s status using the Alarm.com mobile app. If you fear that either you or your last employee out forgot to arm your security system, simply pick up your phone and check. More likely than not, your fear will be settled upon seeing that your alarm has indeed been activated. However, if it has not, you can do so with the push of a button.
Additionally, you can also add and remove user codes remotely using either the Alarm.com app or any internet-connected device. Therefore, anytime an employee leaves your company, you can immediately deactivate their alarm code. This prevents them from coming back uninvited when they are not welcome to do so. Of course, you can both add and delete codes remotely. This allows you to let contractors into your building over the course of a weekend with a temporary code. This presents much less of a security risk than giving out a permanent code that you or an employee uses. Now, let’s shift our focus from remote alarm control to Alarm.com-based smart security!
Smart Security Applications
Although they represent one of the newer additions to the security industry, smart devices have quickly become a prevalent part of home security. Our Alarm.com customers can install smart devices that connect to the Z-Wave receiver included in the Alarm.com cellular dialer. The term “Z-Wave” refers to a mesh network providing communication between our Alarm.com cellular dialer and smart devices that operate on this network. As one of the most popular smart device platforms, Z-Wave technology gives you many options to add smart security devices. Our customers control these smart appliances with the same Alarm.com app that they use to control their security systems.
For example, adding Z-Wave smart locks allows you to control and track access to certain parts of your business without counting on keys for your security. This type of lock works great in areas that deserve extra attention. Assigning codes, rather than keys, to employees to grant access keeps keys from getting copied for later use. You can also use the Alarm.com app to track lock use, and to add and delete user codes. Finally, you can even unlock a smart lock remotely to provide quick access to a room without providing a key or a code!
We also offer smart devices that secure your business against threats other than a burglary. For examle, our smart thermostats let you track and control your business’s environment. These thermostats can also alert you to extreme temperatures that might point towards HVAC equipment issues! For more information on this type of equipment, check out our Smart Technology Security Solutions for Your Business. Let’s now take a look at one more unique feature offered as part of our interactive commercial security monitoring package.
Alarm.com notifications can alert you to activity at your business, such as employees arming and disarming the security system.
Creating Security Through Notifications
In addition to the remote alarm control and smart security features already mentioned, interactive commercial monitoring provides you with instant text notifications that you can customize to your liking. For example, these alerts generally notify you to any alarm activation events. This allows you to receive an alarm alert even before our central station operators pick up their phones! Furthermore, you can also create an alert to find out when someone arms or disarms your security system. These notifications give you both the name of the person using your alarm as well as when they armed or disarmed it. This keeps you from unwittingly falling to an “inside job” if employees stop by to “borrow” your equipment or valuables after hours or on weekends.
In addition to alarm activity alerts, you can also create notifications for when expected security events fail to happen. For example, you can create an alert to let you know if someone neglects to arm or disarm your security system by a certain time, such as in the alert pictured here. This means that if your business does not open on time, you’ll know immediately. It also means that you don’t have to wonder about whether or not the last person out armed the alarm. Now, you can get notified if the alarm isn’t armed when you expect. Upon receiving this notification, simply use your phone to fix the issue! Creating these alerts helps make your alarm more effective and dependable than ever.
Using Interactive Commercial Security to Your Advantage
We hope that this post helps you see how interactive commercial security can work to your advantage. Additionally, we also encourage you to contact us with any questions this post may raise. 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. While on site, we can address any security concerns you may have. Furthermore, we can also make our own suggestions based on observations we make during our visit to your property.
Perhaps you have a solid security system in place and want to upgrade your alarm monitoring to take advantage of the interactive features described here. Or, maybe you don’t have much in place in the way of security, and want help in designing a complete system from the ground up. Either way, we are happy to help! We’ve assisted hundreds of customers in creating security for their businesses based on their own unique security needs. Together, we can create a complete security plan to keep your property, as well as your employees and your valuables, as safe and secure as possible.