RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Avigilon Central Monitoring Event - ISC WestLOL. 2.5K-3K per Diem. 25 years of boots on the ground, 02:00 work and boardrooms to loading dock, learnt from some of the most respected people in the world. You can’t just hang a camera on a wall and think that some minimum wage person in a central station who just got off the boat. Who can hardly speak English, who can’t even read the simple instructions on an alarm response protocol is going to be able to work a 10-100 cameras video system and get you the right info. Simply isn’t happening and I would challenge any company to prove me wrong. Let them impress you for first week or month but then go do a random test on them 3 months later and watch things fall apart. Sad but ever so true. I deliberately tripped a fire alarm during a 01:00 audit on one of THE major international security firms. I called station and no signal (at least that they could locate). Gave them address, phone number, name of company etc. no flipping idea of building or alarm. Neat! Half the time they call wrong people, don’t give zone info, call police when in big red lettering on the sheet it says to not call. Nice idea remote but companies need to pay big dollars to have even the slightest chance they will get anything out of it. You need to pay an employee at least 70K to monitor that system and that won’t happen in a boiler plate central station. Tell your client they need to pay 6K a week ( At least) to have 24/7 coverage and a qualified person behind the screen and you just limited yourself to a very select few. So is it worth the effort in pushing that service? Video surveillance is 99% after the fact and that takes effort. Monitor live and expect intelligent analysis on the fly is a big step. I put a seasoned investigator to watch a period of 2 hours of post event activity and he couldn’t see the perp piggyback in on a card access controlled door. I told him, it had to have happened between x and y. I played the tape back and found him right away. The other guy’s eyes simply glazed over the activity and missed it. You need to be seasoned pro to know what you are looking for and then you need to be alert the entire 8 hour shift! It’s called being video blind. 30 minutes of watching and you can have an elephant dance past a camera and half the people won’t notice. THAT is where good analytics and proper setup of a system comes into play. That takes effort to tweak and that costs beaucoup $$$ it’s coming and getting better but not yet there and they need to ramp up quality of people watching the cameras. I once tested a company’s facial recognition of me (death mask image as well) and under ideal test conditions my “match” showed up on alarm screen as an Arab looking man. Glad they didn’t have a gun set as response mechanism, I’d be dead. Lots to do so I hope AVO spends money on getting it right and doesn’t go buying a guard or lock company with investment money.