UL issues UL 827 B listing for remote guarding services

NORTHBROOK, Ill.—UL announced in early October that Elite Interactive Solutions is the first company certified for remote guarding under UL 827 B, its listing for managed video.

“We worked with UL who clearly identified alarms [and] video verification—as an extension of alarms, versus true remote guarding,” Louis Hook, Elite's EVP and COO, told Security Systems News.

Elite, founded in 2008 and based in Los Angeles, currently provides remote guarding services to more than 200, according to Hook.

UL started discussions with Elite on the standard about a year ago, Hook said. UL announced UL 827 B in June 2015.

“While all monitoring stations are similar—designed for continued operation by highly trained staff, for example—the operational and equipment needs are very specialized for the services they deliver,” Peter Tallman, program manager for alarm certificate services at UL, told SSN in an email interview. “For this reason the managed video monitoring service category was created by applying the general facility and equipment sections of UL 827 and creating UL 827 B to describe the specialized facility requirements and service delivery.”

Tallman continued, “The process of obtaining a certification for managed video monitoring services is similar to that which is applied to central stations that are engaged in monitoring alarm systems. However, the evaluation of the service delivery is tailored to assessing the ability of the staff to deliver the agreed upon service to the protected property, in this case through the use of video equipment.”

The company is located in a data center, Hook said, which helped the company meet Internet redundancy, power and building requirements.

Elite's founder, Aria Kozak, started with a focus on car dealerships, according to Hook. “His concept was, if you can protect tens of millions of dollars of inventory, that's outside, on a major thoroughfare, with no fences, that's designed for people to walk through … then you can pretty much protect anything,” Hook said. The company now also protects low-income housing, distribution and warehouse spaces.