Parks Associates research finds 62% of security system owners experienced a false alarm in the past year, with the majority caused by user error, but the prevalence of these false alarms undermines consumer confidence and increases costs for all involved parties.

The white paper, "Solving False Alarms: Bringing New Context for Monitoring," also analyses the impact of the new Alarm Validation Standard introduced by The Monitoring Association (TMA-AVS-01). The paper highlights the impact of false alarms on public safety, with emergency responders often diverted from genuine security events to respond to false alarms, and the provisions in the TMA-AVS-01 designed to reduce false alarms while still ensuring proper responses for actual emergencies.

"The TMA-AVS-01 standard aims to reduce the number of false alarms by providing more context and information for a more effective response," said Jennifer Kent, VP, Research, Parks Associates. "Ultimately, the adoption and implementation of this new standard enable a standardised approach to validating and reducing false alarms."

The security market has experienced rapid growth, driven by new technologies, but research shows false alarms undermine consumer confidence, increase costs for security companies and owners, and jeopardise future sales for security systems, devices, and monitoring services.

“TMA-AVS-01 represents the most significant shift in the alarm industry in decades. Alarm response is transitioning from binary, blind alerts that offer very little context to homeowners and monitoring providers, to technology-enabled alerts that provide situational awareness and actionable intelligence,” said Keith Puckett, Founder & CEO of Ubiety Technologies. “Ubiety joined The Monitoring Association to learn from industry experts and be part of the implementation of AVS-01.”

“Ubiety is grateful to partner with Parks Associates to bring focus on this transformational opportunity to help improve security responses for everyone,” Puckett said. “Parks Associates is the voice in the industry ushering in change, to both understand and unlock innovation and value in the market. Parks Associates uniquely understands that this shift will help everyone from security companies, to monitoring centers and homeowners.”