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Hello and welcome to the FrontPoint Podcast series. I’m your host Greg Able joined as
always by FrontPoint’s Chief Operating Officer Peter Rogers. Hey Greg. Hey Peter thanks for
taking the time. Today we’re going to talk about a new technology in home security called
pending alarms. Peter we’ve talked a lot here in the past about how a burglar might
disable a home security system by cutting the phone line. Right, but there are plenty
of other ways to try to take out a home security system aren’t there? That’s right. What
a lot of people don’t realize is that the alarm system itself is quite vulnerable and
I’ll explain to you a little bit about how an alarm system works, but there’s a feature
called pending alarms which makes it much more difficult to the point of being impossible
for an intruder to take out a system in this way.
Alright tell us about pending alarms, what is that and what does it mean? The way an
alarm system works normally is say an intruder comes into your home. There is a 30 second
period where after the door opens the alarm system is waiting for someone to put the code
in. That doesn’t happen. Then the siren sounds (the interior siren in the home) and
then there is another waiting period because in case it’s you, the system wants to give
you another chance to put your code in and possibly scare an intruder away before the
system will contact the central station. Alright so let me catch up for a second. If I’m
a burglar and I get in there and I kind of know this, I might try and find that security
panel and smash it so that call never happens. That’s right. As an intruder I’ve got
this window of 1-2 minutes before the system actually signals out where I can find the
system and whack it and take it out before it communicates at all.
Alright, and then pending alarms though? The way that pending alarms work is that the system
is actually communicating every time something happens in the home. So if you have the pending
alarm feature every time a door opens, a window opens, the system is armed or disarmed, you
name it, the pending alarm means that the system is communicating. So when that intruder
first came in, the system said I don’t know if this is Greg or a bad guy, so I’m just
going to tell the world or the monitoring center that the door was open and if that
disarm signal is not received within a certain time frame the alarm system treats it like
an intrusion. Okay so if you have pending alarms and someone breaks into your home and
extracts your Control Panel there’s still covered, that call is going to get made to
the monitoring center and to the police? That’s right because that signal that went out immediately
was held in a pending alarm status and because no disarm code was put in, that pending alarm
became a real alarm and the police were dispatched. Okay, but if you don’t have pending alarm,
and someone gets to that Control Panel before the call is made all that’s happening is
maybe a siren but no call to the monitoring center? That’s correct. Local siren heard
in the house and nothing else so you’re really unprotected.
Alright and how prevalent is pending alarm in home security systems sold today? Less
than 1%. It’s actually a next generation feature that’s fairly unique. At FrontPoint
we offer to all of our customers with our interactive level and we feel that more companies
will offer it in the future but today, it’s hard to find. Alright, pretty cool. So pending
alarms; a new technology that people should know about. Peter, thanks a lot for your time
once again and thank you for joining us for this edition of the FrontPoint Podcast series.