3 Tips for Preventing False Alarms

3 Tips for Preventing False Alarms
Bob Gamble
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False alarms can lead to a variety of unwanted repercussions, including fines, consumption of police resources, and ownership dissatisfaction. Fortunately, there are ways to help prevent them from happening at your home or business. For customers of our security company in the Mid-Atlantic, here are some tips for preventing false alarms at your property.

Avoid Making User Errors

One of the most common culprits of false alarms is also one of the most preventable: user error. A simple user error like entering the wrong passcode can trigger a false alarm, which creates a noisy nuisance and leads to a call from the monitoring center (if there is no answer to the call, the police may be dispatched). To avoid triggering this series of events, be proactive to make sure you and every member of your household knows your most current alarm passcode at all times. If everyone stores the code in their phones in a place where it can be accessed anytime (i.e. a notes app), this can greatly reduce the risk of someone entering the wrong code.

Give Trusted Visitors Codes

Another way to avoid triggering false alarms is by ensuring that only household members have the code. Your alarm code is only for those who live there; other trusted visitors to your home, such as your housekeeper or child care provider, should not have the same code as you. Instead, you can assign these individuals their own user codes in the system. This is a temporary code that grants access to the people you trust to be in your home regularly; it can be changed by you at any time, and it can be enabled only for the specific hours these people will need it. User codes can also be helpful for business customers; they can be given to anyone who is authorized to be onsite afterhours, including technicians and cleaning crews.

Consider Reveal Video Verification

One of the best ways to reduce the risk of your system triggering a false alarm signal is for you to use a video verification service. At Security Instrument, we offer Reveal, a video verification service that puts your existing surveillance cameras on autopilot (no new camera installations needed). Reveal ensures that every time motion triggers your cameras to begin recording, the monitoring center will be alerted and a live feed of your camera will be viewed by a security agent.

The agent will quickly analyze the video to verify that a real intrusion is taking place; if it is, then the agent will dispatch police. This process is highly effective in filtering out false alarms.

These are the most effective ways to fight false alarms and reduce your risk of experiencing them. To learn more about Reveal video verification or our alarm monitoring service, call Security Instrument today. Our security company services the entire Mid-Atlantic, including Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey.

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