1. October2013 Issue348
WHAT
INTEGRATORS
WANT
Pelco Spectra HD 1080 PTZ 30x
Seneschal Installs Concept For Air Liquide
ECS Services Wins Jakarta Embassy Contract
Milestone’s New XProtect IP Family
Cloud Tamper Detection Developed
Calamity: A Vision Of Monitoring
Dahua Protects Maha Ganapati Temple
The Interview: Salto’s Marc Handels
Firetide’s Brilliant Wireless Mesh

2. 48 se&n
SPECIAL REPORT CALAMITY
Monitoring stations have depended
on a static business model for decades,
monitoring the same Contact ID-based
alarm events using the same detection
and reporting technologies with no change
outside of comms paths. But change is
coming.
A VISION
OF MONITORING
O
NE of the weaknesses of the typical
monitoring business model has long been
the recurring revenue of telco rebates. It’s
given monitoring providers a revenue stream that’s
unrelated to level of service, quality of technology,
speed of response. Instead income depends on line
numbers and the number of phone calls made by
client alarm systems.
The result is a market in which installers barter
theirmonitoredclientlists,orbureaus,tothelowest
bidder. Monitoring stations might get 20 cents a

3. se&n 49
BY JOHN ADAMS
Another
of the big
challenges
was future
proofing the
facility. We
only had one
chance to
get it right, so
everywhere
we ran a
cable we
pulled 5.
line per day, just $A73 per year, for providing large
business customers with a 24x7x365 emergency
response service based in a state-of-the-art fully
redundant control room that cost millions to
construct.
In a toxic marketplace governed by price,
monitoring providers trade these bureau lines for
recurringrevenuefromtelcos.Thisbusinessmodel
means telcos subsidise installers and the general
public, while real revenue models are pinched
so much that investment in new technology is
virtually impossible.
The long term results of telco rebates in the
Australian market are easy to see. There has been
technological stagnation, a squeeze on monitoring
station staff numbers, and procedural short cuts
- especially at peak business opening and closing
times in the morning and evening.
It’s against this backdrop that Daniel Lewkovitz
conceived,financedandbuiltCalamityMonitoring,
a monitoring station designed to offer SLA-level
monitoring services using the latest technologies.
It’s a brave move from Lewkovitz and a good
one. Unlike some competitors, Calamity sells
its services on the strength of its ability to meet
serious security needs.
It’s impossible to understand what drives
Calamity Monitoring without getting a handle on
Lewkovitz himself. With a background in security
consulting, system design and specification,
Lewkovitz is certainly one of very few IT people
who comprehend physical security – not just
technically but operationally.
In the past, Lewkovitz was responsible for
auditing security systems and security responses
at high security buildings that paid large amounts
of money for high security monitoring response.
Over time, Lewkovitz not only realised that the
services he was auditing did not work, he came to
understand what was required for such services to
function.
Importantly, Lewkovitz had also worked as an
operator in a monitoring station in younger days
and combined with his later work, these early
experiences led him to formulate the design
for a perfect monitoring station – a facility that
was open to the future and designed to allow
best performance with current technology. It’s a
refreshing attitude in an industry segment groaning
under the weight of a dysfunctional symbiosis
between monitoring stations and their bureau
clients.
During my time at Calamity Monitoring, the
conversation ranges widely. We cover council
regulations, the NBN, human resources, business
models, wireless alarm technology, market
threats, false alarms, disaster recovery, local and
international industry standards, as well as future
technology with an accent on video verification
and IT.
At all times there’s an undercurrent of intense
passion from Lewkovitz. It’s interesting though
perhaps not surprising, that the electronic security
industry ignites fiercely protective instincts in its
best suppliers. Each time the subject strays towards
the flaccid status quo in the monitoring market, the
man’s tone and body language turn emphatic.
Calamity Monitoring occupies a quirky
standalone building down at Matraville near
Botany Bay. But once I get past the incongruously
imposing façade, it’s clear that this is the ideal
building for a monitoring facility. A heavy slab,
thick concrete walls none common and plenty of
parking. It’s perfect. The internal layout originally
comprised a small warehouse space now used as
the monitoring centre, and there’s a surprisingly
large and flexible office space above.
Networkroom
150Mbmicrowaveuplink

4. 50 se&n
The monitoring room is an impressive thing,
with its line of 7 dual-screen workstations facing
a bank of huge monitors displaying alarm events,
local and remote video feeds. Even weather radar
and live local news are included on the video wall,
giving operators additional information inputs.
Acting as mounting points for the monitors are a
series of steel lattice beams arching up the walls
and across the ceiling like the ribs of a great animal.
Calamity’s is one of the largest monitoring spaces
around. Most graded areas are fairly tight but this
one is capacious. It means there’s room to expand
but more than that it means there’s room to run the
monitoring function well. The workstations are
large, the video wall is large and highly informative,
there are adjacent offices, amenities and breakout
areas within the graded area.
According to Lewkovitz, it took 2 years to find
the right site and another 2 years to build his
monitoring station.
“Around 6 months involved negotiating with
council, with 18 months dedicated to the build,”
he explains. “Part of the reason we built our own
monitoring station is that most monitoring centres
are very old fashioned and difficult to upgrade.
“To try and change core operating systems,
automation software – it would be like trying
to change aircraft mid-flight. We also wanted
the architecture to suit the purpose, not hinder
performance.
“Additionally, our operators had 6 months of
training before we opened. Everyone was starting
from scratch together because I had hired staff
from outside the industry who would not ignore
false alarms, who would not ignore low battery. I
wanted our own way of doing it, a better way.”
“We have invested very heavily in all areas of the
facility,” Lewkovitz explains. “It’s been done right.
We have our electrical cabling separate from our
data and security cabling – no vital power points or
switches for critical systems can be accidentally hit
by someone’s backpack.
“All our electrical connections are off the ground
and our data centre is one floor off the ground so
that if there’s flooding we will be able to continue
operation. The building has a 120kVA diesel
generator, as well as a substantial UPS capability
comprising 27 batteries giving around 3 hours of
backup depending on load.
“We are fully redundant and have a backup
facility outside Sydney offering instant failover –
hot redundancy – it takes a couple of seconds. And
we’ve also installed ducted vacuuming so we can
regularly and silently ensure that the environment
is as dust free as possible, enhancing the reliability
of our electronics.”
Calamity also has Telstra fibre coming straight
into the building, as well as a 150Mb microwave
link.
“This means that if a backhoe digs up the
fibre or the phone lines outside, we don’t miss a
beat,” Lewkovitz says. “If a path goes down we
have 2 others – so we’re carrier grade and I think
for IP monitoring, video monitoring, our phone
system, that’s critical. It’s something that’s not yet
addressed by the AS2201 standard and something
we’ve invested heavily in.”
Lewkovitz says Calamity focuses on high quality
software and hardware systems that are agnostic
wherever possible and one of the benefits is that
the company’s services are versatile. If you came in
with a product and asked Calamity to monitor it, he
says, the team could write the middleware.
Obviously the monitoring software itself is a vital
component and Calamity uses a solution used by
the best monitoring companies in the US.
“It’s a solution that’s very actively developed – a
lot of the alarm monitoring software platforms in
Australia have not had a major version update in 10
years – sometimes more,” Lewkovitz says.
“As part of our overall service, we also invested
in video monitoring capability, to facilitate the use
of video during the processing of alarm events, as
well as giving us the ability to manage third party
video surveillance systems.
Calamity Monitoring’s facility is certified to
AS2201.2GradeA1byASIALandithastheesteemed
5-Diamond certification from the U.S. based Central
Station Alarm Association, something only 130
U.S. monitoring providers and no other Australian
monitoring stations have. CSAA’s 5-Diamond listing
I tell them
the reason
their current
monitoring
provider
is no good
is that the
prices have
not changed
in 10 years
so there’s no
money to
upgrade old
monitoring
systems.
SPECIAL REPORT CALAMITY
Thegenerator
Commsriser

5. 52 se&n
is a living standard that relates to customer service,
staff training and commitment to reducing false
alarms.
After checking out the monitoring room, we
climb the stairs and poke around in the data centre
– its defining feature is a huge amount of rack
space with only a small amount occupied. This
is deliberate, Lewkovitz tells me. Calamity built
with the future firmly in mind and doesn’t want to
outgrow this site.
“We’ve also got VESDA protecting our data centre
– so that if anything should start to go wrong we will
know about it in a pre-fire stage and won’t have to
shut down our centre.”
Upstairs the office spaces are commodious and
there’s plenty of room for a business continuity
centre for third party businesses trying to survive
emergencies.
“If a disaster occurs that impacts one of our
client’s sites, they can continue to run their
business from this secure space. They can call us
and say – we’ll be there in 20 minutes and we can
configure it as a hot site or a cold site,” Lewkovitz
explains. “We’ll have power when they don’t, data
when they don’t – whatever they need to run their
business, we have.”
What was the hardest part about building and
commissioning this monitoring station? I ask.
“Obviously, there were a few challenges,” says
Lewkovitz. “One was the fact there aren’t a lot of
facilities like these in Australia, so you can’t learn
too much from other people’s mistakes. Instead
you have to be sure you don’t get it wrong. That
takes a lot of care and planning.
“Another of the big challenges was future
proofing the facility. We only had one chance to
get it right, so everywhere we ran a cable we pulled
5. Now, there’s a good chance we’ll never use 3 of
them but I never want to come to the point we can’t
upgrade or expand something because there’s 9
inches of steel and concrete in the way.”
According to Lewkovitz, accessibility for people
with disabilities was important as well, though
because it was factored into planning, this was
not especially difficult to facilitate once the right
building had been found.
Something that was a challenge was training.
Lewkovitz had deliberately selected staff from
outside the security industry and that meant all of
them had to be trained prior to opening in a virtual
monitoring environment.
“We set up a virtual host for training simulations
prior to opening,” he explains. “Every single alarm
our operators monitored during training was
confirmed break and enter, multiple homicide, gas
detection, shots fired with police and ambulance
required and while this was being actioned, 6
other alarms of equal seriousness were banking up
behind it.
“By the end of training our team could manage
all this with aplomb but of course, when we went
live, almost nothing was happening. Our customers
don’t have false alarms, they have well installed
systems and proper procedures – so that was an
interesting experience.”
Something else that’s a challenge, according to
Lewkovitz, is attracting the right kind of customer.
“I think the market has been damaged by
decades of low monitoring fees paid to monitoring
providers,” he says. “I speak to prospective bureau
clients who say they are unhappy with their
current provider, yet say they want to pay no more
than 20 cents a day per line and ask how many
months free monitoring will I give them to bring
their lines across.
“And I tell them the reason their current
monitoring provider is no good is that the prices
have not changed in 10 years so there’s no money
to upgrade old monitoring systems. That dollar a
day per monitored line is retail – and even that’s a
pittance.”
SERVICES
So, what services does the Calamity Monitoring
In order to provide a Service Level Agreement
(SLA), we expect that connected security
systems are properly designed, installed and
operated in order to eliminate false alarms.
SPECIAL REPORT CALAMITY
Batterybank

6. 54 se&n
SPECIAL REPORT CALAMITY
station offer? The team can pretty much monitor
anything that can be integrated to its monitoring
platform. And they’ll build custom middleware
bridges if required.
“If a condition can be measured by a sensing
device, we can monitor it,” says Lewkovitz. “As well
as security sensors of all kinds we can monitor
cooling towers, air-conditioning, coolrooms,
chillers, pumps and detectors of gas, fire, flood,
smoke and temperature.
According to Lewkovitz, philosophically he’s
had a change of mind when it comes to when and
where monitoring should be used in domestic
applications.
“It used to be that alarm systems were actively
monitored when homeowners went out but now
I take the position that the system should be used
when people are in their homes,” he says.
“And not just sleeping with the alarm on –
I’m talking about monitored smoke detection,
swimming pool gates, making sure kids get home
safe from school, monitoring pets.
“These are all things technology gives us the
ability to do, yet no monitoring station actually
does. Instead installers put in the same 6-device,
8-zone alarm panel they’ve been installing for
15 years, hook up the monitoring and make no
additional effort.”
Lewkovitz says that Calamity goes further,
offering superior solutions in domestic and small
commercial applications, as well as supporting
higher security applications.
“For commercial and government clients, we
offer a variety of reporting systems that meet OH&S
plus insurance requirements,” he explains. “These
include emailed test reports, open/close reports
indicating what time the premises were opened
and closed each day as well as details of incidents.
“Calamity can tell you exactly what room an
alarm event took place. And for high volume
customers we can arrange access to a secure
web portal for producing your own management
reports and editing system data as required.”
Something else Calamity can do that’s really
important operationally, is configure complex
response logic via its monitoring software. This
might entail contacting different parties depending
on time of day, zones activated or other criteria
without relying on operator interpretation of
instructions. This is all handled by sophisticated
automation-logic and intelligent signal processing
and it makes response faster and more accurate.
Perhaps the thing I love most is that Calamity
will commit to IT industry-style Service Level
Agreements for its monitoring services. This is a
big deal. Calamity’s SLA’s outline an agreed rapid
response to an alarm at a premise and following
agreed procedures to contact and/or send police,
patrol response, keyholders or other responders.
The team will also perform remote diagnostics and
advise if there is a technical fault. It’s pretty snappy
thinking from Calamity and it includes an excellent
catch – monitored security systems have to be of
good quality.
“In order to provide a Service Level Agreement
(SLA), we expect that connected security systems
are properly designed, installed and operated in
order to eliminate false alarms,” Lewkovitz explains.
“This way, we can consistently achieve response
times well ahead of other security providers.”
While users can opt for PSTN connections if
they must, Calamity recommends high security
products incorporating GPRS and internet-based
communications paths with regular polling. This
ends expensive PSTN phone line and call costs and
terminatesthevulnerabilityofPSTNlinestocutting.
Underpinning Calamity’s service levels is that 5
Diamond certification. In addition to the AS2201.2
grading, 5 Diamond means the monitoring station
is committed to random inspections and quality
standards applied by a recognised test lab. It also
means a commitment to the highest levels of
customer service, the reduction of false dispatches,
raising industry standards and staff education.
A good customer is a person or business that
recognises risk and is passionate about protection.
The first few years experience suggests our clients
are fussy as hell but I don’t mind that – I want
them to be fussy about security.
VIDEO SURVEILLANCE
One of the key characteristics of Calamity
Monitoring is a commitment to video monitoring
of alarm events. When an alarm event is activated,
cameras send images to the monitoring station to
provide additional information to operators.
“One of the things with video verification is
that people misunderstood it initially,” Lewkovitz
explains. “It’s not about reducing unnecessary
callouts - what if the camera misses an intruder for
instance – it’s actually about delineating between
an event that needs to be investigated further and
an event that has been confirmed by video and
needs an emergency response.
“I think monitoring stations were nervous about
video verification for fear if they missed something
on camera and did not respond and the premises
was ransacked then they would be at fault. Our
policy is simple – when an alarm event takes place
we will dispatch a ‘standard response’ such as a
patrol. But when an alarm event is confirmed by
video, then we send an enhanced response such as
the police.
DanielLewkovitz

7. 56 se&n
SPECIAL REPORT CALAMITY
“Being able to call emergency services to a
confirmed event is a big deal. At the moment when
an event occurs, an operator is required to make
multiple phone calls that may not be answered
before dispatching a patrol in city traffic that might
arrive an hour later. What’s the point? But if the
event is video verified then the response is going to
be far quicker and more empowered.”
Do you think video verification of alarm events is
going to be big in the future?
“I think it’s the future, there’s no doubt about
that,” says Lewkovitz. “And this is one area I think
Calamity Monitoring is really going to make an
impact because most the incumbents either don’t
do video verification or they can only handle
certain platforms for which they’ve built software
integration – and that doesn’t work for a business
that has just dropped hundreds of thousands on a
camera install of a different type.
“Instead, we have a platform that supports
hundreds of third party cameras and multiple
DVRs/NVRs. This system allows us to remotely
support third party surveillance solutions. We can
also hook straight into IP cameras that generate
MJPEG images or AVI files when an alarm sensor
triggers. Images are delivered over IP infrastructure
and are integrated into our alarm monitoring
software.”
According to Lewkovitz, with video what’s
important is a unified approach from a monitoring
perspective.
“You can’t train operators on dozens of different
VMS solutions – you want a single simple solution
that they can’t get wrong and that has the ability to
record operator views and acknowledgements and
actions,” he says.
“You can’t leave any room for operator mistakes.
In an alarm event, you compile a list of actions for
an operator to undertake. The more complex the
procedures instructions, the longer it takes for an
operator to action an alarm event. What we have
done with our system is program that logic in at the
data entry stage so we basically build a whole flow
chart – in an alarm event, the system rapidly tells
the operator what to do and that’s all they can do.”
It’s obvious that many installers and many users
want a very basic service – they are driven by
price and nothing else. Given this, what’s an ideal
customer for a quality service like that provided by
Calamity Monitoring?
“This is a monitoring facility with significant
capabilities and I want those capabilities to be
employed to the full by all our customers, says
Lewkovitz. “I don’t want us to be a grudge purchase
– I want clients to be engaged by the service we
provide.
“The way I see it is that security is a core business
service. Some people say, what’s the business plan
that justifies the cost of security? But they never
ask for a business plan that justifies a fire system,
a redundant data server array, an HVAC solution
or air conditioning. These systems are simply
necessary – and that’s how security is to me.
“It’s not something you should have to convince
someone to buy based on cost savings. You need
protection or you don’t. In some countries such
truths are more self evident but Australia is not
exempt. There are fewer attacks on business
premises than in the Middle East, fewer home
invasions than in South Africa, fewer lawsuits than
in the U.S. but all these things still occur.
“At the residential level we offer security for
clients who actually have assets that are worth
protecting,” he explains. “We are also perfect for
businesses that are serious about their business
continuity, security and risk management.
“A good customer is a person or business that
recognises risk and is passionate about protection.
Or it might be a business which has significant
compliance requirements they need to meet. The
first few years experience suggests our clients are
fussy as hell but I don’t mind that – I want them to
be fussy about security.”
CONCLUSION
Building a monitoring station is a serious
commitment. It’s an expensive investment and
building a strong and worthwhile client base in
a market polluted by telco rebates is probably a
greater challenge still.
Importantly, Calamity seems to have found a
formula – to offer the best service and the latest
technological developments, including video
verification of alarm events, to those customers
that genuinely need it.
“I’m seriously excited,” Lewkovitz says. “I think
we are doing something that no other monitoring
provider wants to do or is even thinking of doing.
“The way we see it, Calamity does not only sell
security – we sell peace of mind, we sell expense
reduction, we sell business continuity, we sell
convenience, and we sell security.
Networkroom