Why Your Home Security System Needs 24/7 Alerts & Escalations

When it comes to proactively protecting your home and everything in it, installing home security devices is a great first step, laying the foundation for a more secure environment.

However, these devices in isolation won't live up to their full potential; they also need a way to communicate with you in the event of an issue.

Enter: 24/7 alerts and escalations — a service offered by high-quality home security and monitoring systems to add an extra layer of security to your home.

Below, we'll walk you through the benefits of 24/7 alerts and escalations, explain why it's one of the most important services we offer, and describe related Hedge features and capabilities.

Protect Your Home No Matter Where You Are 

The key benefit of 24/7 alerts and escalations is obvious: alerts and escalations help you proactively protect your home whether you're next door or across the country. Learn more about Hedge's alerts and escalations below.

Alerts

At Hedge, an "alert" is a push notification sent from your smart home devices to the Hedge App on your phone. In the event of a non-issue, you can quickly dismiss the alert and go on with your day. But if your home devices have detected something that might indicate a legitimate issue, you can take immediate action.

Your Hedge devices are pre-programmed to send you an alert in the event of the below:

• Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors sounding in range of Hedge's SmartCam

• Excess moisture or water detection under sinks, toilets, hot water heaters, or wherever else you've placed your Hedge Water Detector

• Motion and noise detection when your home is armed

• Your garage door opening or closing when your home is armed

Escalations

If you don't dismiss the alert, Hedge's "escalation pipeline" will be activated. During an escalation, a series of notifications, texts, and calls will be made to you and other users on your account, followed by your emergency contacts.

The ability to add emergency contacts is a key feature of Hedge's 24/7 alerts and escalations, adding yet another layer of security.

Say, for example, something happens at your home while you're traveling with the other users on your Hedge account (which is often the case when the other users are family members). For some reason, you don't have phone service. Maybe you're on a plane — or maybe you're driving through a cell phone dead zone. Either way, in the event of a potential issue, our escalation process means that your emergency contacts will be notified when you fail to respond and can step in to resolve the issue.

Remember — your emergency contacts won't have access to your Hedge App (meaning they won't be able to view alerts, video clips, or your live feed), and you can revoke their access at any time.

With Hedge, 24/7 Alerts & Escalations Require No Additional Setup

Setting up alerts and escalations looks a little different depending on your home security and monitoring system. At Hedge, we've done the groundwork for you: every Hedge system comes programmed with 24/7 alerts and escalations already in place. All you need to do is connect your Hedge smart home devices with the Hedge App (more details on that here). After that, you can designate additional account users and your emergency contacts, although they're not required to enable alerts and escalations.

##24/7 Alerts & Escalations + "Auto-Arm": The Perfect Pairing

Round-the-clock alerts and escalations are one of the most important security features we offer because they allow you to monitor your home no matter where you are, empowering you to take action in the event of an issue.

But alerts and escalations are only good if they're activated. And while more pressing alerts — like your smoke detector sounding — are always activated, "security alerts" like motion/noise detection and your garage door opening/closing are not. Fortunately, we've designed a solution to mitigate the risk of human error, doing away with the need to manually activate these additional security alerts every time you leave your house.

Auto-Arm: A Hedge User Favorite 

We call this solution "auto-arm," and it's a favorite feature among Hedge users. Auto-arm will arm or disarm your home depending on the proximity of Hedge users to the home. This means that when you leave your home, it will automatically "arm," or activate additional alerts. When you return home, it will automatically "disarm," or deactivate additional alerts.

Auto-arm is helpful for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being this: without it, you'd be inundated with alert notifications every time you or someone in your family moved or made a noise within range of your Hedge security camera. Sure, you can disable notifications — but then you run the risk of forgetting to turn them back on. (For more on auto-arm and avoiding "alert overload," click here — and stay tuned for new auto-arm capabilities coming soon.)

24/7 alerts and escalations are one of the most important features your home monitoring and security system can have — and if yours doesn't, it might be time to look into new options. Our Support team would love to answer any questions you may have about Hedge.