Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in CS sister publication, Security Sales & Integration. Law enforcement and security executives at schools, universities and hospitals would be wise to heed this advice, despite the message’s original target audience being security systems integrators.
Campus public safety and security pros can help to operationalize the new Active Threat Notification Standard, or ATN-01 standard, which can be found here. Doing so will help your organization better comply with the most up-to-date standard of care.
In the past 15 years, it seems that there has been a steep increase in violence toward places including schools, places of worship and other public spaces. These tragic incidents are now becoming an almost-weekly occurrence with no foreseeable reduction in sight.
I could go on and on about the “why,” but that’s not what this article is about. Let’s leave that for others and instead focus on how the security incident, and more specifically what the monitoring center deliverables, can do to help manage these types of events when they do occur.
The technology has been getting better. Between artificial intelligence, video analytics, weapons detection, access control, alarms and notification systems, we are now able to get ahead of some of this.
However, this technology and innovation are moving at a crazy fast pace, so fast that, many times, we don’t get an opportunity to train or educate our partners in the public safety space on what it is we do, what we call it or what it even specifically is.
How Can the Security Industry Better Explain Its Value?
We can now do things that even a few years ago we only dreamed of. That is a good thing, but at the same time, it has created a huge gap in communicating these things to all stakeholders. Everyone is trying to do the right thing, but when we speak a different language, all we do is slow down the process and create additional, unnecessary delays in getting help to the right place with the correct understanding of the condition.
Related Article: How to Secure an Open Campus
Think about how communication about an incident has evolved. We started with “there is a fire somewhere around the intersection of 12th and Main St.” That shifted to “there is a fire at 1234 Main St.”, then to “a waterflow alarm at 1234 Main St.” Next, we were able to say “a waterflow on the second floor at 1234 Main St.”
Today, we can convey “a waterflow on the second floor of 1234 Main St., the room temp is 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the gates have been opened, the front door has been remotely unlocked and here is the link to the live video coverage.”
About four years ago, The Monitoring Association (TMA) recognized that this was a problem and it was only going to get worse. We started down the path of creating a common set of alarm types and definitions, how to process them, and how to convey them to public safety. When seconds really count, the last thing we want is confusion or to waste time explaining or asking questions.
This standard just completed its ANSI listing and is now live on the TMA website. It’s called the Active Threat Notification Standard, or ATN-01 for short, and is available free.
We’ve Got a Lot of Work to Do
Now comes the hard part. The standard was written with the help of many people, including those from public safety, but it’s up to us to operationalize this in our industry.
“Us” is everyone who works on these types of systems including salespeople, designers, installation teams and monitoring center personnel. We all must use the same vocabulary and set expectations among the end users and all other stakeholders.
This cannot be a half-hearted attempt at understanding and implementing this in your organizations. If you do any work or monitor these types of organizations, such as schools, campus environments, or public spaces, you really should be digging into this. It’s now out there as a published “standard of care” that’s in everyone’s best interest to use.
Related Article: How Critical Communication Technology Protects Lives and Assets
I challenge everyone reading this article to download the standard and read it; have everyone on your staff read it also. Make sure your zone information references the terms used in the standard. Make sure your monitoring center has this and is also using the same terms, and that they are using the appropriate workflow and terminology with public safety.
As standards go, this one is pretty short and to the point. It’s only 34 pages and there are lots of fun pictures, graphs and charts. It was written to be easy to understand and implement. But, like I said, the hard part is the effort we must all put in to further our collective mission to protect and secure customers lives and property.
Morgan Hertel is vice president of technology and innovation for Rapid Response Monitoring.
Note: The views expressed by guest bloggers and contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Campus Safety.
