WestPoint · Intruder detection
The alarm that went off five times and nobody looks at any more.
The problem with intruder detection is not detecting: it is the false alarm. Project, detectors, zoning, video verification, testing and maintenance — so that the day it really sounds, somebody goes.
The system switched itself off and nobody switched it off.
It took three weeks and there was no fault at all.
A perimeter is installed. The first night it goes off at half past one: a branch. The second night, twice: a cat and the wind. By the third week, whoever is on duty already knows that nothing ever happens at that hour in that zone, and dismisses the alert without getting up. Nobody has disconnected anything. The system is still on, still invoiced and still under warranty. It has simply stopped being any use.
And the worst of it is not that it does not alert. It is that the company believes that zone is covered, and so does not do other things it would do if it knew it was not. An alarm that gets ignored is worse than no alarm: it gives a feeling of protection that corresponds to nothing.
On the day someone really does break in, the alert arrives just like the other thirty. The difference between the two cases was decided on the day of the project; it is not in the brand of the detector.
The whole trade is in it not going off when it should not.
Detecting movement is easy and it is cheap. What is hard is detecting a person who should not be there and not detecting everything else that moves in that place: animals, branches, tarpaulins, an insect on the glass, the heat rising off a metal sheet at dusk, a lorry going past on the next street.
That is not solved by turning the sensitivity down, which is what gets done once the system is installed and becoming a nuisance. Turning the sensitivity down turns a noisy alarm into a deaf one: the problem goes from visible to invisible, and it is still there. It is solved by choosing which detector goes at each point and what has to coincide before it triggers.
That is why the visit is at night when the protection is for the night. What moves in a yard at three in the morning looks nothing like what moves at eleven in the morning, and the second is what you see on a normal visit.
The decisions that get taken.
- Which technology stands up to that environment. A detector designed for an office, put in a loading bay with draughts and temperature swings, is going to give trouble — and it is not the detector's fault.
- What has to coincide before it triggers. Requiring two different things to detect the same event cuts false alarms a great deal in exchange for some sensitivity. Where there are a lot of false alarms that trade works out well; where you have to detect first time, it does not. It is a decision per zone, not a general setting.
- How the installation is divided into zones. An industrial unit under building work, a warehouse used at night and an empty office cannot be in the same zone, because then you cannot arm one without arming all three. Badly zoned, the system ends up disarmed for convenience, which is how most of them end up.
- What happens if somebody tampers with a detector. Covering it, turning it, opening it or cutting its cable has to raise an alert in itself. Without this, the easiest way in is to switch the alarm off from outside and wait.
- Who receives the alert, in what order and with what instruction. An alarm receiving centre with a written protocol, a phone, or both. And what is done if the first does not answer.
- What gets verified before anyone is sent out. It is what separates an alert from a decision, and it has its own section further down.
Verifying is what turns an alert into a decision.
When a detector goes off, all you know is that something crossed in front of it. Whoever is on duty has two bad options: send somebody out blind every time —which costs money and so gets dropped— or send nobody and hope.
Video verification changes that: the alert arrives with the seconds of video of what set it off, and whoever decides looks before deciding. It is ten seconds that turn thirty false alarms a month into thirty alerts dismissed in ten seconds, and the one real one into an immediate call.
This is almost always what keeps an intruder detection system in use the following year. It is not an extra in the bid: it is the part that holds up everything else.
The grade, and why you have to ask for it in writing.
The standard for alarm systems talks about security grades, and each grade demands specific things of the equipment, of the installation and of what happens when someone tampers with something. It is not a marketing label: if your insurer, your activity or the end client asks for a grade, the system has to meet it in full and be able to prove it with documentation.
What happens in practice is that the grade is mentioned in the bid and never spoken of again. And there are two different things there that get confused on purpose: equipment that supports a grade, and an installation that meets that grade. The second includes how it is cabled, how it is powered, what it does when tampered with and what is written down.
So the question to ask —including of us— is what grade is being delivered, and to have it delivered in writing. And if what is needed is a grade that project cannot reach on the budget available, that gets said before signing.
The maintenance that gets invoiced and not done.
It is the most repeated complaint in this trade, and also the easiest to check.
Intruder detection maintenance means testing the detectors. All of them, one by one, walking in front of each and checking that the alert gets all the way to the end of the chain: the control panel, the receiver and the phone of whoever has to find out. That takes time, and so it is the first thing to disappear.
What often gets invoiced is something else: a visit in which the panel is looked at, no faults are seen on the screen and a sheet is signed. The panel does not know that the detector at the back of the warehouse has been hidden behind a pallet since March. The person who walks in front of it knows that.
The way to tell the two apart is the report. If an inspection report does not say which detector was tested, at what time and with what result, they were not tested. We hand ours over that way because it is the only way a client can check that they got what they paid for — and that includes the years when we are the ones doing it.
What we do not do.
We do not turn the sensitivity down to stop alerts coming in. If a zone gives false alarms, the job is to find out why and change whatever needs changing, even if that means coming back and not being able to invoice that visit.
We do not sell a grade we will not be able to document. It is easy to put a word in a bid, and it is checkable the day somebody asks for the paperwork.
We do not fit extra detectors to fatten a quotation. A perimeter with twice as many points as it needs does not protect twice as much: it gives twice as many false alarms, and ends up in the same place as the story this page opens with.
And we do not sign a maintenance contract with a schedule we will not be able to keep. Promising four inspections and doing one is what has taught a lot of people to believe nobody in this trade, and it takes years to put right.
The other seven areas.
Intruder detection needs the cameras to verify and the access control to know that whoever came in was allowed in.
The control panels and the perimeter systems.
Ordered by what really separates them: how they behave with the false alarm. The last five are for outdoor perimeters, which is another trade — out there you have wind, fog, animals and vegetation that grows, and there is no good technology: there is technology suited to THAT perimeter.
What people ask about alarms.
The ones that come up most. There are 40 on this subject, and the other 34 are in the question index.
All the questions, by subject▸What are the security grades in UNE-EN 50131?
Four levels, from 1 to 4, describing what class of intruder the system is designed against. Grade 1 assumes an intruder with little knowledge and everyday tools; grade 2, someone with some knowledge and common tools, including some measuring instrument; grade 3, someone who knows how alarm systems work and brings tools and electronic equipment; and grade 4, someone with the means to plan in detail and even to substitute components.
The grade is not a label on the panel: it conditions the whole installation. It changes how many detections are needed before an alarm counts as confirmed, how often the transmission path is supervised, how long the battery has to hold without mains, whether detecting the masking of a detector is compulsory, what happens when someone cuts a cable and what gets logged about all of it.
And there is a parallel classification that always gets forgotten: the environmental class, which says what environment each piece of equipment is designed for — indoor, general indoor, sheltered outdoor or outdoor. A high-grade detector with an indoor environmental class, hung in a loading bay with draughts and temperature swings, meets nothing and gives trouble on top.
▸How do I know which grade applies to me?
Three things set it, in this order: whether your activity is among those required by the private security regulations, what your insurance policy demands, and what the client's specification asks for if you work for someone who imposes one.
As a guide, and only as a guide: homes and low-risk shops are usually resolved at grade 2; obligated premises and installations holding valuables, sensitive storage or contracted guarding are designed at grade 3; grade 4 turns up rarely, and always with a specific requirement behind it. The last word does not belong to a website: it belongs to the standard that applies to you and to the paperwork signed by whoever hands it over.
And a practical warning: going up a grade is not changing the control panel. It changes the number and type of detectors, how they are cabled, how they are powered, how it is transmitted and how much it costs to maintain. Asking for grade 3 on a grade 2 budget ends in an installation that says one thing in the bid and is something else on the wall.
▸Does grade 3 equipment make my installation grade 3?
No. Equipment certified for a grade is a component that can be used in an installation of that grade; whether the installation meets it depends on the cabling, the power supply, the tamper detection, the supervision of the transmission and what is written in the handover documentation.
It is the most profitable confusion in this sector and the easiest to undo: ask in writing what grade is being delivered, with a date and a signature. If it does not appear in the handover documentation, it was not delivered, however much the bid mentioned it.
Do it with whoever is offering it to you today, us included. And if the grade you need is not reachable on the budget available, that gets said before signing and not at the inspection two years from now, which is when it usually turns up.
▸What is the Private Security Regulation and how does it affect me?
It is the regulation that, together with Ley 5/2014 on Private Security (the Spanish private security act) and the orders that develop it, governs who may install, maintain and connect alarm systems in Spain, which premises are required to have security measures, and what has to happen before an alert reaches the police.
Three things affect an ordinary company's day-to-day most. If the system is connected to an alarm receiving centre, the installation and the maintenance have to be done by a registered security company. The centre is obliged to verify the alert before passing it on to the State security forces. And there are compulsory periodic inspections that are not a commercial recommendation.
If the system is not connected to any centre and the premises are not among the obligated ones, the framework is far looser. It is worth knowing what that means in practice: there is then nobody obliged to verify, nobody obliged to respond, and nobody obliged to be awake at three in the morning.
▸Am I required to have an alarm?
It depends on the activity. The private security regulations set out a list of premises required to install security measures, and it includes, among others, credit institution offices, jewellers and silversmiths, art galleries and antique shops, petrol stations, lottery outlets, betting shops and gaming premises.
In those cases the measures are not freely chosen: the regulation says what has to be there, it has to be notified to the relevant private security unit, the installation is subject to inspection and the maintenance has to be under contract. There are also activities with their own sector regulations —explosives, critical installations, certain storage facilities— with added requirements.
And outside that list, the obligation usually arrives by another route: the policy. It is very common for theft cover to require a system of a given grade, connected to an alarm receiving centre and with the maintenance up to date, and for exactly that documentation to be asked for on the day of the claim. It is worth reading the policy before designing and not after.
▸What is a registered security company and why does it matter?
It is a company authorised and entered in the register of the Ministry of the Interior or of its autonomous community to provide certain private security services. To install and maintain systems connected to an alarm receiving centre you have to be one, and to do it on obligated premises, you also have to be one.
Why it matters: if your system is connected and whoever maintains it is not registered, that maintenance does not count for the purposes of the regulation. It is one of the first things looked at when there is a claim and somebody goes through the paperwork, and it is a far worse conversation to have on that day than beforehand.
You check it by asking for the registration number of whoever is going to install it and verifying it. It is public information, it costs nothing to look up and it is a perfectly normal question to ask in a first meeting.
Get started
How many times did it go off last month?
That number tells you whether your intruder detection system works or is just switched on. Tell us what is installed, how many alerts come in and how many were real, and we will tell you whether it can be fixed with adjustments, with different detectors or with video verification.