Everyone has stories. Take this year’s Monitoring Center of the Year recipient and the time the company hired a consultant to make sure management was meeting the needs of the millennial generation.

Eyeforce, headquartered in Houston, offers remote video monitoring and access control services.  

As a service provider since 1997, many of Eyeforce’s legacy sites were sending alerts via older methods such as outdoor PIR and/or beam detectors, and basic video motion detection. Accordingly, Eyeforce faced an increase in the rate of false alarms received due to bad alerts or triggers.

In today’s security market it can be extremely difficult as a security dealer or integrator to truly differentiate yourself from your competitors, build and establish your unique brand, and remain sticky to your customer base. There is simply so much competition within the industry that everyone is basically saying “me too” and offering it for a few dollars less.

Just as there are a number of things that qualify as “video monitoring” — from verified video to guard tours and more — there are equally varied ways that dealers have found success in providing video monitoring services to their customers.

Established by an integrator and formally launching in 2018, CHeKT is a monitoring-solutions company that says its goal is to “push the reset button for the video monitoring space” by introducing genuinely affordable, scalable video monitoring hardware and services.

Video is the darling of the dealer-run or third party central station, and while it’s not new technology by any stretch of the imagination it’s a growing category offering innovative ways to bring sight, sound and detailed visual information and data to security monitoring.

With a particular focus on the application of video surveillance technologies in central station monitoring, Video Monitoring TODAY features perspective from industry experts, profiles of leading companies, coverage of trends and issues, and relevant news. This first issue is dedicated to fully exploring the opportunity that video monitoring presents to dealers and integrators, whether you have your own central station or use a third-party service.

A key consideration for every business is how to properly secure its data and assets. Video monitoring has long been a great tool in the arsenal of security professionals, allowing for dynamic and real-time observation of physical locations and data centers.

COPS Monitoring, Williamstown, N.J., recently announced it is building dedicated mPERS monitoring centers inside its N.J. facility and one other site (to be announced), from which it will be offering mPERS to its dealers. Jim McMullen, president and COO of COPS, discussed the move in an exclusive Q&A with SDM.

SentryCon, SentryNet’s annual dealer conference held in Biloxi, Miss., was held April 23-26 with more than 225 security industry professionals in attendance. The main focuses for this year’s conference included how to deal with current challenges facing the security industry and how to increase business and RMR.