Almost every alarm company will tell you your system is "professionally monitored." What they usually won't tell you is which central station is actually answering the call, what it's certified to do, or how long you'll wait on hold when it matters most.
Here's something most homeowners and business owners don't realize: the alarm company that sold and installed your system is often not the same company answering the phone when your alarm goes off. A huge share of the industry outsources monitoring to a central station, and the quality of that central station varies enormously, from garage operations running a handful of workstations to independently certified facilities held to strict national standards.
The word "monitored" tells you almost nothing about which kind of operation you actually have. The certifications behind that central station tell you a lot more.
We didn't pick our central station because it was the cheapest option. We picked it because it holds certifications that most monitoring centers in this industry simply don't have, verified by independent, nationally recognized organizations, not self-reported.
Our central station carries the Five Diamond designation from The Monitoring Association, awarded only to centers that satisfy all five of the program's points of excellence, a distinction most monitoring centers never earn. It's UL-listed for Central Station Protective Signaling Services and Central Station Host Services, the baseline national standard for a legitimate monitoring operation. It's Certified Alarm Validation Scoring (CAVS) certified, meaning every signal is evaluated for authenticity before a dispatch decision is made, which cuts down on false alarms while making sure real ones get taken seriously. It's verified by TMA to meet ANSI/CSAA CS-V-01 and ANSI/SIA CP-01 standards for reducing false dispatches, and it's approved to use FirstNet, the dedicated public-safety cellular network built for exactly this kind of critical communication. And it holds Factory Mutual approval, one of the most demanding third-party certifications in fire and life-safety monitoring.
Stacking up that list of certifications is expensive and demanding to maintain. Most alarm companies don't bother, because most customers never ask.
If you already have a monitored alarm system, whether it's with us or someone else, it's worth asking a few direct questions. What certifications does your monitoring center actually hold, and can they show you the certificates? Do their operators work from a real, staffed facility? How long is a typical hold time when you call in? Is there a built-in delay before an operator starts working a signal?
Most alarm customers never ask these questions, because most alarm companies never bring them up. If your provider can't answer clearly, or the answer is a vague "yes, we're monitored," that's worth paying attention to. The system on your wall is only as good as the people and standards behind the phone call it triggers.