- For an alarm monitoring company to monitor your home alarm, you must first have a home alarm. If you do not have one, the company will send a technician to your home to install a basic home security system, often free or at greatly reduced cost (the company recoups the cost of the system over the term of your monitoring contract). This new system is set up from the beginning to contact the monitoring company in the event of a security breach. If your home or office has an existing security system, the monitoring company will reprogram the alarm with their proprietary information.
- Once the security and monitoring companies have been installed or programmed, the company's front-end work is complete. The security system monitors the premises and waits for a security beach. If such a breach occurs, the system sounds an alarm and notifies the monitoring company using the proprietary notification method programmed into the system when it was installed. Generally, the system dials the monitoring company over a regular telephone line in the even of an alarm, though some more advanced systems contact the monitoring company over the cellular network.
- Most modern monitoring companies receive alarm notices electronically from the alarm system; these notices indicate important alarm information such as the type of alarm (burglary or fire), time and date of the alarm and even which individual sensor on the security system was activated. In addition, companies which claim to "actively" monitor the alarm system may also receive system status notifications from the system indicating issues such as low batteries or broken sensors. When any notification--emergency or otherwise--is received by the monitoring company, representatives of the company immediately contact the alarm system's registered owner or a list of delegates provided when the alarm system was installed.
