Lou Fiore Appointed Vice-Chair of SISC
CSAA to Develop New Standard

SISC Appointment

CSAA’s Immediate Past President, Lou Fiore, has been appointed to serve as Vice-Chair of the Security Industry Standards Committee (SISC).

CSAA, SIA, NBFAA and UL have two voting representatives each on the committee. In addition, manufacturers, distributors, installers, monitoring companies, full-service alarm companies, insurance companies, public safety agencies, end-users, and consumers are also represented on the committee.

Bill Moody of ADT is the current Chair of the SISC. Lou will become Chairperson for a two-year term beginning at ISC/East this August.

The succession plan that has just been implemented by SISC calls for the current Chairperson, Bill Moody, to continue as Vice Chair for one year, followed by a new, elected Vice Chair. This succession plan facilitates a smooth transition from Chairperson to Chairperson.

CSAA to Develop New Standard

Furthermore, the SISC has asked CSAA to develop a standard that will detail a central station's response to the signals generated by the new ANSI/SIA CP-01-2000.

The Control Panel Standard - False Alarm Reduction Features, released as an ANSI Standard in June 7, 2000, details recommended design features for security system control panels and their associated arming and disarming devices to reduce the incidence of false alarms.

The features are applicable to both residential and commercial properties protected by an electronic security system. The standard is intended for implementation by manufacturers in the design of control panels and alarm signal receivers. It is also intended for general reference by all affected parties, including security system installers, specifiers, and users; central station owners and operators; manufacturers of central station products, such as receivers and automation software; and local authorities.

Since control panels using this standard generate many new types of signals, CSAA will develop a standard that will describe the different signals and the equivalent central station response.

Mr. Fiore, also the Chairperson of CSAA's Standard Committee, will spearhead the development of this new CSAA standard.

New CSAA Board Members Announced

CSAA welcomes Daniel Demers, President of Protectron Inc. and Kim Sears, Vice President of Sales for Security Systems by Hammond, Inc. as new Board Members.

Mr. Demers has been active in CSAA for several years and was a speaker at the 1999 CSAA Annual Meeting on the topic of the penetration of the Internet technology in the U.S.

Ms. Sears was the Co-Chair of the Millennium Council. She has been in the central station industry for 13 years.

Thanks to Kim and Daniel for agreeing to serve on the Board.

DICE to Offer In-House Financing

CSAA member Dice Corporation has announced that it will offer in-house financing to qualified central stations who want to purchase DICE's central station monitoring software.

The company has a $100 million line of credit, that will be available for financing. DICE is the first software company in the industry to offer this.

"In the past, DICE targeted large to mid-size companies. With the consolidation and recent mergers in the industry, we (DICE) expect that the smaller companies will grow due to customer attrition from the large, consolidated companies. This money will allow smaller companies the opportunity to run more sophisticated software to effect the bottom line for their company and give better service to their customers," said Cliff Dice, President of Dice Corporation in an interview with CSAA.