Bulletin #37

At COPS, we continually work to exceed the standards set by various governing bodies and/or legislation such as UL, FM, IQ, TMA Five- Diamond, SOC, and HIPAA by addressing infrastructure and security needs before the ever-changing technology or market demand inevitably causes them to become obsolete. As an alarm dealer, you should expect your central station to not only progress with the technical demands of the marketplace, but to anticipate them before there are issues. It wasn’t long ago that we reported $2,000,000 in upgrades to our technical infrastructure to ensure that our services continued to be both secure and reliable. Well, we’re at it again with another $1,000,000+ investment to take reliability and security to a whole new level. Each of our 6 networked monitoring stations now utilizes 3 separate communication paths for alarm processing and voice communications. The first is a dedicated secure MPLS (Multiprotocol label switching) circuit, which is backed up with 2 separate private and secure VPN internet connections utilizing different broadband carriers. This provides a great deal of redundancy – if one circuit goes down either unexpectedly or for maintenance, each one of our sites can continue to operate by automatically switching to one of their two backup circuits. Even with this high level of redundancy, there was still one small vulnerability that had the potential to affect service levels: if a circuit were to become unavailable, calls and alarms that were already in process on a dispatcher’s phone or computer would be dropped, and would need to be re-established on the new circuit. To solve this problem, we invested in Meraki switches and firewalls from Cisco, the most prominent networking company on the planet. Now, through the Meraki hardware, each location connected to our monitoring and telephone equipment has the real-time capability to utilize any of their 3 connections as needed – and without interruption – to an alarm screen or active telephone call to your customer or the local authorities. This way, if one connection goes down, all calls and alarms in process will fail over – and will continue uninterrupted. Meraki does this automatically by using secure failover SD-WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network) features that are designed to allow our network to dynamically adjust to changing conditions without the need for manual intervention. SD-WAN technology ensures optimal performance for critical applications and helps to avoid disruptions of highly performance- sensitive traffic, such as phone calls and alarms. Using Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) by Cisco Talos, the Meraki hardware not only provides a more robust and reliable connection between sites, they are also a leader in cybersecurity. Talos analyzes some 1.5 million instances of malware every day, and helps stop 7.2 trillion attacks annually. To do so, Talos maintains the largest threat-detection network in the world, using leading-edge detection and prevention techniques designed to discover, assess, and respond to the latest trends in hacking activities, intrusion attempts, malware, and vulnerabilities. The information Talos collects is used to continually update our Meraki hardware to protect from current cyber threats. In addition to state-of-the-art firewalls and switches, we also replaced our Generators in NJ to increase our backup power capacity by 10 TIMES . Our new Kohler 500REOZJ 500kW diesel generators hold 3,000 gallons of fuel and have a run time of nearly 2 weeks at 25% capacity (we’re currently at 10% capacity). These massive generators provide enough electricity to power 100 homes, 20 busy Home Depot stores, or the most critical wing of a hospital! In addition, our Florida site has been outfitted with a new UPS and our Texas site is also receiving a new backup generator in the coming months. COPS is setting new standards in central station technology by proactively addressing all of the itemswementioned in this article so far. These recent multi- million dollar investments were not by any means “over the top” or excessive – nor will they be the last significant investments we make. The monitoring industry is evolving at a fast pace, and it certainly isn’t for the complacent or faint of heart; it requires diligence and a commitment to excellence. CONTINUALLY INVESTING IN OUR FUTURE TOGETHER TOTAL RUN TIME 500kw POWER 2X 3,000 GALLONS DIESELFUEL 3,000 GALLONS OF FUEL CURRENT UTILIZATION 10 % Generator #1 Generator #2 0 % ENOUGH ELECTRICITY TO POWER 100 HOMES, 20 HOME DEPOTS & THE MOST CRITICAL WING IN 2 HOSPITALS X100 X20 X2