Protocols About 2 min read
Alarm monitoring protocols
Follow alarm reports from the premises through the receiver to monitoring software. Check message acceptance, supervision and the operator response at each stage.
On this page
Overview#
Alarm communication has several distinct interfaces. Confusing them produces brittle integrations:
protected premises monitoring centre
panel / communicator ── DC-09 ──> receiver ── DC-07 ──> automation
│ │ │
└─ DC-03 or │ └─ acknowledgement, receiver status
Contact ID └─ IP transport of event content
operator telephone ── DTMF / voice ──> premises audio-verification system
AV-01
| Reference | Interface | Status note |
|---|---|---|
| SIA DC09 | Premises equipment to central station receiver over IP | Current ANSI/SIA edition is DC09 2026 |
| SIA DC03 | SIA format alarm communicator to receiver | Current public SIA listing is DC03 2017 |
| Contact ID / SIA DC05 | DTMF alarm communicator to receiver | Legacy but widely encountered; public listing is DC05 2016 |
| SIA DC07 | Receiver to monitoring automation computer | SIA's public index and store expose conflicting edition labels; verify the purchased copy |
| SIA AV01 | Monitoring operator to premises audio verification equipment | Public listing is AV01 2014; DTMF command set standard |
| IEC 60839 alarm transmission | Alarm transmission systems, equipment, and network requirements | IEC 60839-5-1/-5-2/-5-3 baselines plus separately labelled IEC TS 60839-7-8 IP message protocol context |
Shared engineering concerns#
- Preserve account, receiver, line/channel, partition, zone/user, qualifier, event, and timestamp semantics without silently coercing unknown values.
- Treat transport acceptance, protocol acknowledgement, automation ingestion, operator presentation, and response as different milestones.
- Make duplicate detection and replay handling explicit. Alarm networks intentionally retry; duplicate delivery is normal, while duplicate operator action may not be.
- Record occurrence time, transmitter time, receiver time, and ingest time separately.
- Fail closed on malformed control messages, but don't discard the raw evidence required to diagnose a field incompatibility.
- Never infer restoration merely because a fault event stops arriving. Use an explicit restore event or authoritative state query when the protocol and product support one.
Safety boundary#
Monitoring path work can suppress, delay, duplicate, or falsely generate dispatch relevant events. Keep development on synthetic accounts and isolated receiver/automation paths. Never use real subscriber identifiers or exercise panic, duress, fire, medical, hold up, lockdown, or dispatch workflows without the monitoring centre's written authorisation and operational controls.
Primary source#
- Security Industry Association, At a Glance Guide to SIA Standards, reviewed 25 August 2026.