There is a lot to think about as a business owner. You are maximising your income, watching your expenditure, and looking after your employees’ well-being. These tasks often occupy much of your time, meaning security can sometimes be overlooked. But whether you are a sole trader or a CEO of a multi-million-pound organisation, making sure your business is appropriately against unwanted intruders, fires, or any other disasters, for that matter, is critical to keeping your business running. While your security and fire systems can give you a good level of defence, monitoring those systems can provide an even greater level of protection. Chubb visiON+ is our suite of always-on, connected, and responsive services that give you around-the-clock peace of mind that our experts are protecting your business. Remote monitoring is part of that suite. It connects fire and security devices to our remote Alarm Receiving Centres, also known as ARCs.

Paths and Polls

We monitor a whole range of devices, such as fire alarms, intruder alarms, telecare alarms, lone worker systems, and CCTV, to name a few. Devices are connected to the ARC by signalling ‘paths’. These paths are digital connections, which are made via the internet (IP) using WIFI or wired (ETHERNET/LAN) connections or via a GSM mobile signal (GSM, SMS or GPRS using 2G, 3G or 4G with 5G just around the corner). The traditional PSTN telephone line is being phased out as the impending closure of the copper wire infrastructure approaches towards the end of 2025. Depending on your level of security, you can connect to the ARC via one or two of these paths. Typically, a small-sized business may use one path, while medium to large corporate organisations use two. Two paths mean there is always a backup if one of the paths fails. This option is becoming much more popular because of the added security. Your connected devices will send regular ‘polls’ along the path to the ARC. Polls are like heartbeats; their frequency also depend on the level of monitoring you have chosen. Polls can be sent once a day, once an hour, or as frequently as once every five minutes. The more frequent the poll rate, the higher the level of protection. If a device fails to respond to a poll, possibly due to fault or interference (environmental, weather, or deliberate act), it causes an alarm activation in the ARC.

Remote Monitoring

Our systems are highly automated and programmed with intelligent algorithms to determine the poll’s status, among other alarm types. This cutting-edge technology is vigilantly looking for missed polls and enables us to monitor limitless systems of all types, 24/7 globally – something achievable only with this level of sophistication. Every keystroke from any team member is logged and constantly reported where needed. Our highly trained staff see real-time alerts, making our service instant. Alarms are presented by priority level, from threat to life (the highest) to information only (the lowest), ensuring the most rapid response goes to the highest risk level. Our high level of automation means secure machine-to-machine communication takes the strain allowing us to work smarter.

What happens when an alarm is activated?

If your alarms trigger, activations are escalated to our ARC agents, and our monitoring software gives them exact instructions on how to handle the alarm event. The agent is presented with your details and then proceeds to dispatch the alarm using the predetermined instructions, all appearing on the screen in front of them. Every instruction is agreed upon between you and the alarm installer. These instructions depend on the type of alarm being monitored and can be tailored at the ARC to meet your specific needs. This could range from an automated email or SMS text to inform you of a diagnostic event or fault, informing guard patrols and key holders that they need to attend the premises, to escalating more serious alerts to emergency authorities. In severe alerts, we use machine-to-machine technology, such as Echo, to instantly communicate directly with police control rooms. Smart technology refers to your unique reference number (URN). Utilising M2M technology improves the response time. At the click of a button, we can send the URN to the Police, giving them details of the alarm type, your details, and the location of the alarm event. This is incredibly fast and efficient and means that our agents are free and prepared to respond to the next alarm activation – which could be seconds away. The rapid response to alarm activations means that incidents can be dealt with before they escalate into something more damaging. A fire or burglary could put your business out of action for a prolonged period at significant financial cost. If the incident is dealt with at the earliest opportunity, the chances of serious consequential loss and disruption are reduced.

Protecting staff as well as buildings

It is your responsibility as an employer to ensure that your staff are appropriately safeguarded, offering them the facilities that will get them help in the event of intrusions, violence, accidents, or fires.

Under our Connected & Remote Services, we have developed a lone worker app – SafeZone combines CriticalArc award-winning cloud-based lone worker safety, security and emergency management with Chubb’s remote monitoring 24/7/365.

Your staff and lone workers can raise alerts, share their location, and indicate that they need medical assistance, all via the app. Alerts go directly to our monitoring centre response team so we can provide immediate assistance. Our solutions create a safer workplace for your employees. Detecting and acting on activity, whether manually or via an automatic trigger, can assist staff if they get into difficulty or give them enough time to evacuate and avoid danger.

Always-on service

Better connected and more responsive, Chubb visiON+ eliminates any uncertainty, delays, and stress. Our service is backed up by highly trained and licensed operators who are always on hand to advise and support your business. Our standards are incredibly high and follow key industry guidelines set by regulatory organisations, and these are monitored hourly to ensure full compliance without compromise. Our ARCs meet the National Security Inspectorate (NSI) Gold Standard and carry the highest accreditations for the provision of services. You can trust us to make the world a safer place. Please get in touch if you want to learn more about remote monitoring or how you can benefit from remote and connected services for extra piece of mind.