Security System Monitoring

Choosing a company for security monitoring is dependent on what you're looking from it.  The best advice is to make a list based on what YOU WANT from monitoring...not based on what any company is offering. Break your list up into three categories.  Next to each individual item, make a mark if these are absolutes and if they are not there, it doesn’t matter what's the deal, you won't accept it.

Category 1: This is the actual monitoring and items that pertained to how the center handles your actual signals.  This is the real meat and potatoes of monitoring! What safeguards and security is in place for your information?  What training they have?  What redundancy is available?  What procedures are in place for emergency contingencies at the monitoring center?  What procedures to ensure reliability of communications are in place?

Category 2 is response to you.  How do they respond to your need for notification?  What additional features are available such as emergency technical support if you have a system failure or error?  How responsive are they to changing your information and what safeguards are in place to ensure it's you making the changes? When you call them, do they take control and responsibility or are you shuffled between the dealer, installing company or any other entity?

The last category, Category 3 is the ancillary features.  These are items that are nice but do not indicate anything about the monitoring center's alarm handling.  Are these ancillary services approaching normalcy in the monitoring field or are they walking the edge? Do these ancillary services improve your security?  Do these ancillary services improve you life with the alarm?

The final consideration, when the list is complete, is pure common sense and personal comfort.  Think about what it is you want and how all these items mesh together.  Does everything make sense to you about what you researched?  Are you comfortable with your decision or is there something that lingers unanswered in your mind?  Monitoring is all about how your alarm is going to be handled.  It's about what if you can't do anything or say anything; will they still be there for you?

The central Monitoring Station at DC Security ensure that once you are connected to them, you're dealing with the actual professionals who monitor your alarm...24 hours a day!