For decades, traditional burglar alarms have followed the same process: a sensor activates, a signal is sent to a monitoring center, and law enforcement is dispatched with little additional context. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of those alarms are false.

According to multiple industry and public safety studies, between 94% and 98% of burglar alarm activations in the United States are false alarms. In many jurisdictions, only a very small percentage of alarm dispatches involve actual criminal activity.

This has created growing strain on law enforcement resources across the country.

Why Building Owners Should Care

False alarms are more than a public safety issue—they create operational challenges for building owners as well. Many municipalities now impose fines for repeated false alarm dispatches, creating unnecessary expenses for organizations that experience frequent nuisance alarms. Beyond the financial impact, repeated false activations can disrupt business operations, consume staff time, and contribute to alarm fatigue among security personnel and occupants.

When alarms occur frequently without a legitimate threat, employees and stakeholders can become desensitized to alerts. Over time, this can reduce urgency when responding to real incidents. Building owners are increasingly recognizing that the goal is not simply to generate alarm events, but to ensure that alarms provide meaningful information that supports informed decision-making and effective response.

Police departments are dealing with staffing shortages, rising call volumes, and increasing pressure to prioritize verified threats over unverified alarm activity. In some cities, response times for traditional burglar alarms have stretched dramatically, while others have adopted verified response policies that deprioritize or decline dispatches for alarms without supporting evidence.

That shift is one of the reasons AVS-01 is becoming increasingly important across the security industry.

The ANSI/TMA AVS-01 Alarm Validation Scoring Standard was developed to help monitoring centers classify and communicate alarm events more effectively. Instead of treating every alarm signal equally, AVS-01 introduces a structured scoring system that helps identify whether an event has limited information, probable human presence, confirmed threat to property, or confirmed threat to life.

One of the strengths of AVS-01 is that it acknowledges that not all alarm events carry the same level of risk. A single motion detector activation after hours may provide limited information, while multiple triggered sensors combined with video evidence of an unauthorized individual present a much stronger indication of a legitimate threat.

By providing a framework for communicating alarm confidence levels, AVS-01 helps monitoring centers relay more actionable information to responding agencies. This allows law enforcement and emergency responders to prioritize resources based on the quality and credibility of the information available rather than treating every alarm event as equal. As staffing and resource challenges continue across many jurisdictions, this type of prioritization is becoming increasingly important.

At the center of this evolution is verification.

Video verification, audio verification, analytics, and event intelligence are changing how alarm events are evaluated and prioritized. Instead of relying on a single sensor activation, monitoring operators can now review live video, access activity, audio, analytics, and historical event data to determine whether a threat is likely legitimate before dispatch occurs.

This improves more than operational efficiency. It improves response quality.

When monitoring teams can provide law enforcement with verified information—such as visible human activity, suspicious behavior, or confirmed intrusion—responders are able to prioritize calls more effectively and arrive with greater situational awareness. Verified events are increasingly viewed differently than traditional unverified alarms because they provide context instead of uncertainty.

Consider a common after-hours scenario in a commercial facility. Under a traditional alarm model, a motion detector activates and a dispatch request is generated. Responding officers may have little information beyond the alarm location and type of sensor involved.

In a verified monitoring environment, operators can immediately review video footage, determine whether a person is present, observe the nature of the activity, and communicate relevant details to authorities. If an intrusion is confirmed, responders may receive information regarding the individual’s location, direction of travel, and actions being observed. This additional intelligence helps improve situational awareness and supports a more effective response.

In some cases, operators can also intervene before a crime occurs by using two-way audio systems to issue verbal warnings. The ability to verify, assess, and respond proactively represents a significant shift from traditional alarm monitoring practices.

For building owners and integrators, this shift represents a larger change in security expectations. Customers are no longer only looking for systems that generate alarms. They want systems capable of helping determine whether an event is credible, actionable, and worthy of immediate response.

Remote video monitoring is becoming a critical part of that transition. By combining video verification, analytics, proactive monitoring, and operator intervention, organizations can reduce nuisance dispatches while improving visibility into real threats. This allows security teams to move from reactive alarm handling toward more intelligent event management.

The traditional model of sending law enforcement to every unverified alarm is becoming harder to sustain.

Preparing for the Future of Security Monitoring

As security technologies continue to evolve, verification will likely become a standard expectation rather than a competitive advantage. Artificial intelligence-powered analytics, intelligent video systems, remote guarding services, and integrated access control platforms are all contributing to a more data-driven approach to incident management.

For building owners, the question is no longer whether alarms should be generated, but whether the information provided is actionable enough to support a timely and appropriate response. Organizations that invest in verification technologies today may be better positioned to reduce unnecessary dispatches, improve security outcomes, and adapt to changing public safety requirements in the years ahead.

Security as an Operational Strategy

For many building owners, security has traditionally been viewed as a standalone function focused on protecting people and property. Today, however, security systems are becoming an increasingly important part of overall facility operations. Verified monitoring can provide valuable insights into site activity, recurring vulnerabilities, after-hours access patterns, and operational inefficiencies. When integrated with access control, visitor management, and building management systems, security data can help organizations make more informed decisions while improving both safety and operational performance. As facilities become smarter and more connected, the ability to turn security events into actionable business intelligence will continue to grow in importance.

The next decade of security monitoring will increasingly depend on verification, prioritization, and actionable intelligence.

The industry is moving from alarm generation to alarm validation—and AVS-01 is helping define what that future looks like.