No matter how expensive or nice your alarm is, it is completely useless without someone watching things on the other side. This is why security system monitoring is such an important thing. Without it, your alarm system won't do much to keep you safe when you need it. Look for a monitoring company that has a strong customer service team. One of the best ways to check the services of an alarm monitoring company is to check its response statistics. In the event of an emergency, you need people who are going to be calm and make intelligent decisions. You also need to be sure that your monitoring company is able to provide a fast enough response time to any emergencies. This information should be available through the contractor. Using an alarm monitoring company that has an excellent overall "up" time is an important thing as well. After all, these services are only of any use to you when they are up and functioning the way that they are supposed to. The up time refers to the distance between service shortages. These shortages can be anything from power outages to downtime for server maintenance.