In their battle against false alarms, alarm dealers might just have a new weapon to use when trying to slay the ever-growing beast — and it is called video verification.

By Jack Kohane

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According to Friessen, this leading-edge technology offers two-way communications over an Internet-based broadband system connecting the alarms of his residential and commercial customers to his monitoring centre. He adds that those who are currently delivering the expertise needed to monitor alarms over the Internet are better positioned to offer a broader suite of security services than those who are not.

It is estimated that over 90 percent of all alarm calls in Canada are false, mainly due to poor installation, human error and technical malfunctions.

At Davies Harley-Davidson in Richmond Hill, Ont., 12 cameras watch over $1-million worth of inventory.

To reduce false alarms and to prevent a greater number of police departments from adopting verified or even non-response policies, the alarm industry is looking towards several alarm-verification techniques that not only offer revenue-generating opportunities, but will also avoid making it necessary to raise monitoring fees to compensate for the possible need for private guard response.

Meanwhile, central station operators at Maximum Monitoring Services are ready to utilize video verification technology before dispatching police to an alarm.

One potential solution is having central stations partake in multiple-call verification in which at least two keyholders are notified of a triggered alarm before dispatching police. This may be an effective solution for older security systems that were designed to provide a perimeter/interior line of defence against break-ins, but in an era demanding positive identification for any source of security compromise, the need for sophisticated tools to perform the job effectively is becoming more and more crucial.

Enter video verification. Although there is no consensus that video technology (at least at this point in its evolution) is the be-all-and-end-all solution, there is a burgeoning belief among security professionals that video, one day, will be one of the major remedies to the industry’s most widespread and contagious ailment.

“[Video verification] is certainly something we’re seriously exploring,” says Lou Fiore, a past president of the Central Station Alarm Association (CSAA) and president of L.T. Fiore, Inc. a security consulting firm in Sparta, N.J. “Some companies may be offering video verification to clients, but it’s not a widespread trend, yet.

“Operator subjectivity remains the key ingredient,” he stresses, adding that even if an alarm is tripped and a video image stream is activated, the lighting may still be too dim for absolute clarity. “If the operator can’t see what’s going on, and decides to do nothing, where does the liability fall if that turns out to be wrong?”

In response to law enforcement agencies across the continent opting to include non-response measures in their false alarm bylaws, Fiore has recently been mandated by the CSAA to form a sub-committee to develop a standard for electronic alarm verification. “Until we’ve [developed] standards through consensus, there will continue to be a reluctance in the security sector to execute video verification,” he notes.

One who isn’t yet entirely sold on the idea of video verification is Debbie Ackerman, product manager at SecurTek Monitoring Solutions, a Yorkton, Sask.-based monitoring company servicing Western Canada and Ontario.

From the rear of Newmarket Optical, in Newmarket, Ont., a covert camera provides operators at the central station with a bird’s eye view of any incident that has triggered an alarm. Applications, such as this, are prime locations for video verification technology to be utilized.

Ackerman, like so many in the security industry, is taking a wait-and-see approach, keeping all options open for now.

For others, the emerging domainof high-speed Internet — with its large bandwidth signal for improved image clarity — is the ideal solution. Russ Friessen, general manager of AAA Alarm Systems in Winnipeg Man., touts the Internet as representing the next wave of opportunity for the security industry.

“We’ve had an Internet-based video strategy for the past year, and preliminary results indicate it’s quite effective in pinpointing break-ins,” she says. “Although this tool is in its infancy, it’s maturing rapidly.”

According to Friessen, this leading-edge technology offers two-way communications over an Internet-based broadband system connecting the alarms of his residential and commercial customers to his monitoring centre. He adds that those who are currently delivering the expertise needed to monitor alarms over the Internet are better positioned to offer a broader suite of security services than those who are not.

“It’s a ULC-Level 2 type of service,” he adds. “It doesn’t depend on, nor does it interrupt, the phone lines of our customers if the alarm is activated, thus providing an added layer of security.”

For several manufacturers, such as OzVision America, headquartered in Lynn, Mass., and Security Broadband Corp. of Austin, Tex., the future of video verification is now.

OzVision’s innovation involves a compression and streaming algorithm that enables constant video streaming over any network, regardless of the bandwidth or how much motion is in the video, powered by a hardware core based on three parallel-working processors.

The technology embedded in OzVision products allows for the connection of remote video cameras that can be instantly activated by an alarm or manually from a remote location transmitting real-time images as the alarm is in progress.

“For alarm dealers, they can sell this as a remote video system,” says Avi Lupo, president of OzVision America. “[Dealers] can also provide [users] with video services that have nothing to do with security. Recurring revenue comes from much more than just video verification. It’s a tool that gives them recurring revenue through management services. Central stations can now provide video reports, opening and closing reports and all kinds of guard tour video reports.”

As for Security Broadband, it delivers security applications to residential clients and small businesses via broadband Internet connections. Its SafeVillage product, introduced last year, provides video and audio alarm verification, as well as a Web site with remote system access and two-way communication features.

Closer to home, the WebEye Pro, manufactured and developed by SecureVision Technologies in Aurora, Ont., enables high-speed digital transmission and recording of video images and alarms from remote sites via ISDN, cable modem, DSL, ADSL, T1, LAN, WAN and the Internet.

The WebEye system can be expanded four cameras at a time to a maximum of 16, and can be configured with any combination of colour or monochrome cameras. By highly compressing the stream of data using state-of-the-art Wavelet technology, the system can transmit, record and display up to 30 frames per second, enabling real time, remote surveillance and control from anywhere in the world.

“The product incorporates plug-and-play technology making installation fast and easy,” explains Bob Miller, SecureVision’s president. Adding that because of the 168-bit encryption within its own internal processor, there is a vital connection between the cameras and the monitoring station that ensures that the video stream being monitored hasn’t been altered in any way.

Remo D’Angelo, president of Guardtek System, a new monitoring station in Toronto, Ont., lauds the arrival of more video weaponry in his company’s security arsenal. Guardtek is currently using equipment manufactured by Kalatel, a division of GE Interlogix, as the primary means of video verification.

“The product allows us to record information on site and to transmit signals over the Internet to the monitoring station,” he explains, adding the software package then provides the appropriate signal to be picked up on the operator’s screen through the existing computer. The operator then can change screens and obtain additional information that can be used during the course of an alarm event.

Guardtek is also in the investigational phase of developing a system that allows real-time video to be broadcast directly to a pocket PC, so that when guards arrive on site the camera system that is installed on premise is directly available to them in their vehicle as they patrol the perimeter of the building.

“These images are also transmitted to our monitoring station so everyone concerned with the dispatch has the most information available at their fingertips,” says D’Angelo. “Video is definitely here to stay and it will play a much larger role in the overall security verification process.”

As for Fiore, he believes that both audio and video advanced technology will one day become part of the “long fingers the security industry needs to perform effectively and to enhance our ability to service our clients,” he says. “Our industry isn’t the quickest to accept new technologies, but it will come one day.”

Jack Kohane is a freelance writer based in Toronto, Ont.