This article explains the common industry standards that are followed by leading monitoring centers. Most of these certifications require auditing and inspection by accredited, independent parties on regular cycles.

UL 2050

UL 2050 is the standard for National Industrial Security Systems. Broadly speaking, the UL 2050 standard is primarily concerned with the installation and maintenance of high security intrusion systems at government and/or national defense facilities. These systems must be monitored at a monitoring center that meets the UL 2050 requirements. Although you may not have sites that require UL 2050 compliant monitoring, it is an indication that the monitoring center has met very stringent requirements.

UL 827

UL 827 – The Standard for Central Station Alarm Services—is the most common standard that monitoring centers use to differentiate themselves from their competition. The UL 827 standard—from the same people who test your toaster and television for electrical safety—is the baseline standard that governs what kinds of equipment can be used to perform monitoring, the redundancy requirements for monitoring critical systems, acceptable staffing level minimums to respond to alarm events, how quickly events must be handled, and what rules must be followed when responding to such events.

Except in very specific circumstances, having the UL 827 designation is almost a requirement for a monitoring center. Many insurance companies require that their customers utilize UL 827 Listed monitoring centers, and monitoring centers that cannot or choose not to meet the requirements of UL 827 are likely not operating with the level of care, expertise, and reliability that you desire.

UL 827B

While many monitoring providers have the UL 827 listing, very few have the video-specific counterpart listing, UL 827B. This standard builds upon the requirements of UL 827 but adds specific video handling, server system, and procedure requirements. These include network redundancy and monitoring of real-time bandwidth capacity utilization for video traffic. Affiliated Monitoring became the first third-party monitoring center in the United States to attain this listing in 2018.

TMA Five Diamond

The TMA Five Diamond program identifies monitoring centers that are a cut above, not only in facilities and redundancy, but also in the areas of operating procedures, training, and management. Governed by The Monitoring Association, the industry trade group that assists organizations, such as UL, craft the standards above, any monitoring center that achieves Five Diamond certification must meet the following criteria:

• Commit to random inspections and quality criteria standards by a nationally recognized testing laboratory such as UL, FM Approval, or Intertek / ETL.
• Commit to the highest levels of customer service.
• Commit to ongoing job-related education and testing by having 100% of its central station monitoring specialists certified using the TMA online training series.
• Commit to raising the industry standards through TMA membership and participation in its activities.
• Commit to reducing false dispatches.

HIPAA Compliance

Unlike the other standards or certifications discussed, HIPAA Compliance is focused on data privacy and storage rather than monitoring center operations. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act) creates recognized practices for the storage and use of patient health data in the United States.

FDNY Approved

While having a monitoring center that is approved to monitor fire alarms in New York City may at first not seem relevant to your business, approval by the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) is one of the most difficult-to-achieve certifications in the monitoring industry. FDNY approved monitoring centers must exceed UL standards in many ways, and FDNY audits are not only notoriously detailed but sometimes part of a surprise inspection. FDNY certified monitoring centers must provide a regular, intensive training program for its FDNY approved monitoring agents, and each approved operator must pass tests given by the FDNY. Any monitoring center that maintains FDNY approval is very likely to be highly organized, disciplined, and ready for just about anything.

FM Approved

FM Approval is an additional certification that a monitoring center may pursue to demonstrate its commitment to industry-recognized standards. For many years, FM represented insurance companies who required their policyholders to have alarm systems monitored by an FM Approved monitoring center. The FM Approved standard for monitoring centers is similar to (but not exactly the same as) the applicable UL standards. Meeting the requirements of both FM and UL demonstrates a commitment to the rigorous and nuanced sets of auditing checklists.

What Certifications Does Affiliated Monitoring Have?

Have a Special Customer Requirement?

Our dedicated team of Account Managers would be happy to speak with you further about our certifications and listings and why they are critical to your success. Perhaps you have a unique customer need that we can assist with? Call us at (800) 296-9000 or click here to submit an online request.

The post What Certifications Should Your Monitoring Center Have? appeared first on Affiliated Monitoring.

That’s why it is critical to examine your monitoring service provider’s approach to redundancy and resiliency.

What is Redundancy?

Broadly speaking, redundancy is the duplication of critical systems so that if one system fails—which could be a computer server, an alarm receiver, or the infrastructure of a service provider – there is a secondary or tertiary system in place. For monitoring centers, there are a multitude of critical systems that require redundant configurations: automation platform servers, networking switches, communication paths, and power sources, just to name a few.

The concept of redundancy can also be applied to the monitoring service provider holistically. A handful of monitoring providers maintain a secondary, redundant facility, typically in a distinct geographic location from their primary facility. Having this secondary facility allows for business continuity even if there is a major disruption of service at one location.

What is Resiliency?

While redundancy is a key point, the concept of resiliency is of equal or greater value. Resiliency is the capability to quickly and elegantly shift services and operations of a failed component—be it a piece of equipment or service provider—to the redundant backup. Within a monitoring center, an example of a situation where resiliency comes into play would be being able to expeditiously, or better yet, automatically, re-route calls or signals from a failed circuit to a functioning one.

Cold, Warm, and Hot—What’s the Difference?

When defining redundancy and resiliency, the concepts of cold, warm, and hot redundancy are often mentioned.

Monitoring centers that use cold redundancy have backup services or locations, but these backups are not “spun up,” meaning they are not kept in a ready state condition, and monitoring center personnel must manually start them when needed. Once these backup systems are running, manual physical or technical configuration changes are required to replace failed components with working ones. An example of cold redundancy would be having a spare alarm transmission receiver on hand, but not plugged in or attached to the network. While cold redundancy is cost-effective, it means significant operational downtime when there is a failure of any kind. In short, a monitoring center utilizing cold redundancy is not resilient.

Warm redundancy is defined as having backup systems and services ready at the time they are required. Unlike cold redundancy, providers in a warm redundancy state keep duplicate equipment running and configured at all times. Monitoring center personnel, however, must still recognize if there is an issue that needs attention and must then manually switch or cut over services to backup systems. Warm redundancy is more resilient than cold redundancy, but should a failure occur, there will likely be a period of service disruption.

Hot redundancy is the most resilient approach when designing redundant systems. In a hot redundant configuration, all critical systems are not only duplicated, but the backup systems are kept running and connected in such a way that they will automatically cut over in the event of a failure. Another way to achieve hot redundancy is through load sharing. The monitoring center can elect to spread the load of signals and connections across multiple servers, providers, or locations. In the event any one piece is not functioning properly, the other systems will seamlessly take over with no interruption of service. Hot redundancy requires both a large initial and ongoing financial and labor investment to properly implement and maintain.

How has Affiliated Achieved Redundancy and Resiliency?

Affiliated is proud of its industry-leading facilities and has built the most redundant and most resilient monitoring service available today.

Affiliated provides monitoring services from two completely redundant, geographically independent locations in Houston, Texas and Union, New Jersey. All monitoring services are provided in load sharing, hot redundant fashion, so that even a major disruption at either of our monitoring facilities will not impact our ability to quickly and accurately respond to customer events. Each facility has two completely independent generators and two completely independent uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems. All critical services are multi-redundant, many with three or four backup systems. Our service vendors, including telephony and internet providers, are duplicated at both locations, with connections entering and exiting our facilities from distinct areas.

Our resiliency also extends beyond our facilities. Our extensive wide area network allows us to provide monitoring service from anywhere—not just our monitoring center facilities— allowing us to be nimble in difficult circumstances. Our intensive training and continuing education programs ensure that our monitoring agents are cross-trained across specialties and disciplines, meaning that every alarm will be handled correctly every time. This operational flexibility and excellence has even been recognized by our primary industry group, The Monitoring Association (TMA), receiving the TMA Five Diamond central station designation.

What Should I Focus On When Choosing a Monitoring Partner?

• What issues have impacted the monitoring center’s uptime? If so, why did it happen and how long did it take to correct?
• Is the monitoring center’s redundancy hot, warm, or cold?
• What kind of backup systems are in place? Are they tested regularly?
• Is the secondary monitoring facility geographically independent and hot load sharing all activity?
• What standards or certifications does the monitoring provider follow?

Reach out to us with additional questions

Our dedicated team of account managers and system engineers would be happy to speak with you about how we’ve consistently achieved 100% availability across all of our services or answer any questions you may have about redundancy and resiliency at the monitoring center. Contact us at (800) 296-9000 or click here to submit an online form.

The post Monitoring Center Redundancy And Resiliency appeared first on Affiliated Monitoring.