Intrusion Detection Systems

A door contact trips at 2 a.m. on a warehouse that's been closed since 6. Our panel gets the signal in under a second, our monitoring center verifies it isn't a false alarm, and the right response goes out, police, our technicians, or both. That's the whole job: catch it, verify it, respond. We design the sensor layout and zone logic to fit your property, from a single loading dock to a multi-building campus.

What Trips, and What Happens Next

Door and window contacts, motion sensors, and glass-break detectors all wire into a central panel. Outside your scheduled open hours, any of those tripping sends a signal to our monitoring center, not a text you have to notice at 2 a.m. An operator verifies the alarm against your account's response plan before anyone gets dispatched, which is what keeps a raccoon in the parking lot from turning into a police visit.

Every zone also carries entry and exit delay settings, so an authorized employee walking in the front door at 6 a.m. has a set window to disarm the system before it treats them like an intruder. Cross-zoning, requiring two sensors in the same area to trip within a short window before an alarm escalates, cuts down on single-sensor false trips without slowing down a genuine break-in response, since a real intruder almost always crosses more than one zone.

Sensor Coverage, by Type

Every property has a different mix of entry points and open space to cover. We spec sensors device by device instead of dropping in a generic package.

Door & Window Contacts: Contacts on every exterior door and ground-floor window, wired or wireless depending on the building.
Motion Detection: Passive infrared and dual-tech sensors covering open floor space, loading docks, and stairwells.
Glass-Break Detection: Acoustic sensors that catch a break-in attempt at the glass itself, before anyone's through the frame.
Duress & Panic Buttons: Fixed and wearable panic buttons for front desks, cash rooms, and staff who work alone after hours.
Perimeter & Roof Sensors: Vibration sensors on roof hatches, HVAC curbs, and other openings that a standard door contact can't cover.

Wired or Wireless: What Actually Decides It

New construction and any property already opened up for other electrical work usually gets wired sensors, they're more tamper-resistant and don't rely on battery replacement schedules. Existing buildings where pulling wire means cutting into finished walls or ceilings are a better fit for wireless sensors, which install in an afternoon instead of a multi-day electrical project. Most properties end up on a mix: wired at the main panel and high-traffic zones, wireless for the outbuildings and areas where running conduit isn't worth the cost.

Wireless doesn't mean unmonitored. Every sensor reports its own battery status and signal strength back to the panel, and a device that's failing gets flagged before it fails silently, which is the actual risk with wireless coverage if it isn't supervised correctly.

One System, Not Three

Intrusion detection works best tied to the rest of your security, not running as an island. When a door contact trips, we can pull the nearest video surveillance camera's footage automatically so you're not scrubbing through hours of video to find the ten seconds that matter. If the property also runs access control, a forced door alarm and an access log entry from the same door at the same time tell a very different story than a forced door alarm with no credential activity at all.

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Already Have a Panel? We'll Work With It

A lot of the intrusion systems we take over were installed by a previous vendor, sometimes still functional, sometimes just poorly configured. Before we recommend replacing anything, we audit what's already on the wall as part of our equipment takeover process: every zone, every sensor, and whether the panel is even capable of what you're asking it to do. If the hardware is sound, we bring it under SLI monitoring and add zones or devices where the coverage actually has gaps, instead of a full rip-and-replace you didn't ask for. If the panel itself is the problem, obsolete, unsupported, or missing basic supervision, we'll tell you that plainly instead of patching around it.

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False Alarms Cost More Than They Seem To

Most municipalities across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia charge a fee after a property racks up repeat false alarms in a rolling period, and police departments deprioritize response to addresses with a bad alarm history. That's a real operational cost, not a hypothetical one, and it's why sensitivity tuning and correct zone logic matter more on a burglar alarm system than any spec sheet.

Video and audio verification cuts false dispatches even further. When a zone trips, our monitoring center can pull live or recorded footage from a nearby camera before calling anyone, confirming there's an actual person on-site instead of a curtain moving in the HVAC airflow. That verification step is often the difference between a police response that treats your alarm as credible and one that gets bumped down the priority queue.

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Monitoring That Doesn't Sleep

An alarm that no one answers isn't much of a deterrent. Every intrusion system we install connects to central station monitoring, staffed around the clock, so a trip at 3 a.m. gets the same response as one at 3 p.m. You set the escalation plan, who gets called first, when police get dispatched automatically, whether a property manager needs a call before anyone else, and we make sure it runs exactly that way every time, not however the on-call operator feels like handling it. Pair it with live video monitoring and the operator answering the alarm is also watching the camera pointed at it.

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Intrusion Detection for Every Type of Property

Intrusion detection is one layer of a full commercial security system. We install and monitor it for the same range of properties we already manage cameras, access control, and fire systems for across our North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia service areas:

Warehouses & Distribution: Overnight and weekend coverage for buildings with no on-site staff after hours.
Multi-Tenant Housing: Vacant unit and common-area protection between move-outs and move-ins.
Commercial Office Buildings: After-hours coverage for tenant suites and shared common areas.
Churches & Religious Facilities: Overnight monitoring for sanctuaries, offices, and classroom wings.
Self-Storage Facilities: Perimeter and after-hours coverage for gated and open storage properties.
Retail & Grocery: Stockroom, cash room, and after-hours entry protection.

Common Questions

What's the difference between intrusion detection and a burglar alarm?

In practice, none, intrusion detection is the broader industry term for the same door, window, motion, and glass-break sensor system most people call a burglar alarm. We use "intrusion detection" for commercial systems because the design work, zoning, cross-zoning, integration with cameras and access control, goes beyond what a basic residential alarm setup covers.

How fast does someone actually respond when an alarm trips?

Signal transmission to our monitoring center happens in under a second. From there, verification typically takes under a minute, and dispatch (police, our technicians, or both, depending on your response plan) follows immediately after. The bottleneck is usually how quickly police can get to your address, not anything on our end.

Can intrusion detection work with cameras we already have installed?

In most cases, yes. If your existing cameras are on a network our system can reach, we can tie alarm events to the nearest camera's footage without replacing the cameras — and if they need work first, our camera repair team handles that too. If the existing system can't support that integration, we'll say so upfront rather than promising a workaround that won't actually function.

Does the system keep working during a power outage?

Every panel we install has battery backup that keeps the system, including monitoring communication, running through a power outage. Battery status reports back to the panel automatically, so a battery nearing the end of its life gets flagged for replacement before it becomes a gap in coverage.

How much maintenance does an intrusion detection system need?

Sensors and panels are largely self-monitoring, reporting battery life, signal strength, and fault conditions on their own. We recommend an annual functional test to confirm every zone still trips correctly and the monitoring connection is live, similar in spirit to a fire alarm inspection, just without a code requirement forcing the schedule.