Configure monitoring

Why third-party monitoring?

In situations where organisations or Site Managers are apprehensive about managing their own alarms and don’t want to take on this responsibility outside of work hours, Third-Party Monitoring can be configured for the site.

About third-party monitoring stations

Alarm messages are sent from the Controller at the site to the nominated monitoring station in a standard format in accordance with a set of rules. Monitoring stations will have software that interprets messages received. The software will send notifications to nominated personnel at the site or display details on a workstation at the station in a form that is easy for an operator to action.

The monitoring company can notify relevant parties in accordance with an agreed action plan. This could be people from your site, your security technician, or a guarding company who will send someone to check your premises.

If Third-Party Monitoring is enabled, the Site Manager will not receive alarm incident notifications.

How monitoring stations respond to alarms

Actions taken by the monitoring station will depend on the response plan defined by the customer.

Possible actions are:

• do nothing

• monitoring station software sends an automated notification to nominated people at the site

• telephone nominated personnel at the site one by one in an escalation sequence

• call a guard out

• contact police.

The required response by the monitoring station may depend on:

• the day of the week and/or time of day

• what happened

• the value of property at the site

• the level of trust the business owner has in the people who have access to the site

• how much the business owner is prepared to pay monitoring for the service

• whether the system is police graded and/or the alarm has been verified. The rules and requirements for calling the police vary by country and jurisdiction. If required, verification could be by someone at the premises, video verification, or following dual activation.

Message format

Messages are sent from the SMB system to the monitoring station in Contact ID format. This is a standard protocol used worldwide to communicate what is happening on a site to a monitoring station.

The message format is: ACCT MT Q XYZ GG CCC

Code mappings and the rules for formatting and determining which messages to send are fixed. The need or ability for a Technician to configure anything has been minimised.