Similarly, the operations would fail if staff were incapacitated due to illness or accident or if the building housing the operations is deemed uninhabitable.
Any of these scenarios or similar catastrophe would seriously impact the abilities of the security monitoring operation and the services to its clients.
Many of these clients rely on the system to provide notification in event of fire, robbery, hold-ups, equipment failures and so on.
A failure at any one security monitoring centre could potentially leave many customers in danger and also jeopardise any commercial operations for clients and the security monitoring operation itself.
Suretrak ’s system can protect the interests of the security alarm monitoring operation (and its customers by default) from any of the scenarios mentioned above.
By utilising a 24 hour manned data centre with dedicated management software, Suretrak’s system can continually monitor the status of the subscribing control rooms.
Suretrak’s system will detect if a subscribing control room’s computer system and/or human operators are available and active. If its system determines that a location is off-line, it will automatically try multiple alternative data routing paths via fixed line or wireless means (including GPRS or satellite links or other) to try and re-establish the data path to either the same location or another pre-determined location.
These include alternative monitoring centres and backup sites (anywhere in the world) or alternative backup systems within the original control room.
If those avenues fail, Suretrak’s data centre can take over the alarm monitoring processes and notify appropriate contacts of the situation.
The system will also allow for the subscribing control rooms to manually set their system to active or away so that the alarm monitoring process can be continued at another location of their choice or by our data centre.
This will enable a much more flexible means of operation for many smaller, regional or corporate monitoring operations.
In fact the system can take the place of much in the way of typical alarm monitoring hardware usually required in a control room.
Example one:
A subscribing control room provides alarm monitoring services for many of the back-to-base security alarm systems in its area.
These systems include panic alarms, hold-up alarms, fire alarms, temperature alarms for cold storage stock and numerous other reporting systems. Roadwork’s cut telephone cables to the alarm monitoring centre rendering all PSTN incoming dialler and internet connections inactive.
However, because the security alarm monitoring centre subscribes to our service, all incoming data is instantly re-routed into the alarm monitoring control room via a wireless GPRS link. No signals are lost. The alarm monitoring control room is still in business and clients' assets protected.
Example two:
The same security alarm control room in example one experiences a total hardware and computer system malfunction due to lightning strikes and power outages.
Again Suretrak’s system detects that the hardware is non-functional and re-routes the incoming data and voice traffic to another alternate backup site where monitoring can continue with minimal disruption.
Suretrak’s system allows for an escalation of service to multiple alternative locations. Its system will try all programmed options with final fallback to the 24 hour manned data centre which is able to provide the monitoring service.
Example three:
A smaller regional or corporate alarm monitoring operation is capable of providing alarm monitoring services to their client-base during office hours.
Due to budget constraints, they wish to hand-over the operations after hours to another alarm monitoring operation. The operator on the final shift of the day will click the away icon on the computer and at that point all alarm and voice traffic will be re-routed to an alternate site for monitoring.
Of course the alternate site can be our 24 hour manned data centre if necessary.
Example four:
An alarm monitoring control room that only has one operator after hours. The operator becomes violently ill and is unable to perform his or her duties.
Suretrak’s system determines that there is un-actioned traffic at that control room and that the lone operator has not activated the 'deadman' response key within the select time frame.
Data and voice traffic is automatically routed to an alternative site and appropriate contacts called.
Example five:
An alarm monitoring control room wishes to offer new alarm monitoring technology to its clients.
Rather than install costly infrastructure to provide this, the control room can provide the service through our data link and routing service.
Various types of alarm monitoring formats and protocols can be accommodated by the routing service and can be selected by the subscriber to suit their requirements.
Standard alarm dialler systems, high security, proprietary industry formats such as 'Securitel', GPS satellite monitoring data, GPRS wireless alarm data, internet alarm transmission and video systems can be obtained through our service without the need to install dedicated systems at the control room premises.
The claims defining the innovation are as follows:
The core of the system is our 24/7 data centre and communications hub. The data centre can operate as a fully functional alarm monitoring control room in its own right, complete with all relevant alarm monitoring hardware, software, security industry grading and licensed control room staff. The data centre is linked to high speed fibre-optic internet with redundant satellite link.
Subscribing control rooms are supplied with a gateway module designed by us. This gateway device connects the subscriber to us via standard fixed-line internet or redundant GPRS (or other) wireless link.
The Gateway module comprises both a fixed line DSL modem and a wireless GPRS modem (or other communications data modem). The connection is a secure, private, encrypted link.
Suretrak’s dedicated and proprietary software system regularly polls the gateway units at the subscribing customer sites and will adjust the transmission path as determined by the gateway module and our data centre software.
If the gateway module loses fixed line internet connection then an alternate wireless path will be used. If neither path is available or the module has failed or it determines that the system or human element it is connected to has failed then our data centre can bypass the module and send the data to an alternative location (co-location facility) or be handled in-house by our data centre staff. The process is fully automated.
Suretrak’s data centre is also able to route any type of alarm monitoring protocol and format to any subscriber as a regular service in addition to the emergency routing option.
The subscriber can choose which services they require. Formats include digital diallers, wireless systems (either proprietary or as provided by Telco carriers such as GPRS, 3G, CDMA, GSM etc) and GPS satellite tracking data and so on.
The subscriber does not need to install dedicated receiving hardware as we already have it in our data centre and can route the data direct to the subscriber through the gateway module.
Utilising standard 'portable' telephone numbers such as those systems using a '1345', '1300' (or similar) prefix, Suretrak’s system can provide a fully redundant path for the subscriber's voice traffic and for the incoming data normally associated with security alarm dialler units.
If standard dialler data traffic is diverted to Suretrak’s data centre due to a 'busy' or 'no answer' scenario (because the subscribing control room is off the air or congested), the mini exchange at its data centre will identify which subscriber the calls would normally have been answered by, process the calls through its security receivers and then routed by its software according to the required contingency plan.
The subscriber has the ability to manually set the preferred data route giving them the ability to switch data to various locations (including its own live service) depending upon their requirements.
The subscriber may also wish to make use of the data centre to store secure, off-site database backups.
Specification abstract:
The security alarm monitoring control room protection system, data routing and co-location facility allows any security monitoring operation (and its clients) peace of mind that any critical point of failure within their operation will be mitigated by Suretrak’s system.
The system enables continuation of service for its subscribers' alarm monitoring process in the event of equipment failure, data transmission path failure, congestion and operator misfortune.
The system provides this by monitoring the status of the subscribing control rooms' equipment and operators and routing data by alternate means to the same control room, co-location or our data centre itself.
It also provides subscribers the opportunity to provide high technology security monitoring services without the need to install costly infrastructure within their own centre.
The data can be routed directly to their control room via our data centre which is equipped with the appropriate monitoring systems.
A subscriber could, if they wished, utilise only the gateway module that Suretrak supplies and still be able to offer all manner of alarm monitoring services without any other infrastructure of their own.
The system also allows subscribers the benefit of being able to manually switch data to an alternate site (or our data centre) which gives them the ability to operate from premises and services of their choosing depending on their circumstance and requirements.
Suretrak’s system provides a redundant infrastructure and data routing service for the alarm monitoring industry. It is a centralised hub and data repository servicing all subscribers in a cost efficient and timely manner to ensure continuity of service for the safety and security of the community.