Mission Critical Partners representatives told a virtual lunch-and-learn on Oct. 30 that the Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP) can reduce alarm-related phone traffic to emergency communications centers by delivering verified alarm information directly into computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems or, as an interim option, into a web portal called ASAP View.

Crystal McDonald, public safety growth executive for ASAP service at Mission Critical Partners, said the protocol short-circuits the traditional flow in which monitoring centers call an ECC’s 10-digit admin line and telecommunicators manually key alarm details into CAD. She said "there's 77% of the centers are below authorized staffing levels," and framed ASAP as a tool to return time to answering 911 calls and reduce workload pressure on understaffed centers.

The presenters described two primary deployment paths. With CAD integration, pre-validated alarm addresses and data flow directly into the ECC’s CAD and create incidents automatically; that, the presenters said, can save more than two minutes per alarm compared with the manual call-in process. ASAP View is a web-based portal that shows incoming, active and closed alarms in three columns and supports the same bidirectional messaging with monitoring centers; telecommunicators can copy information from the portal into CAD while the agency awaits a full CAD integration.

Karen Carlson, general manager and vice president for the ASAP service, and McDonald also announced a technical change: ASAP can now connect to CAD vendors through an AWS GovCloud direct connect using a standard API. Carlson said this reduces the need for state-switch custom interfaces, "it may seem like a very small thing, but it's a really, really big thing," and that the GovCloud path supports CJIS-level security while enabling richer payloads (audio, video, PDFs such as evacuation plans).

Presenters said the portal includes alarm details such as zone activation and callback contact information; an alarm must be accepted in the portal within a configurable window (examples cited included 30, 60 or 90 seconds). If the ECC does not accept the alarm within the set window, the monitoring center receives an automated notification and will fail over to a phone call to the ECC.

The group cited live deployments and case-study results. McDonald named Denver, El Paso, Jefferson County and Adams County in Colorado as jurisdictions live via the state switch. She also cited Riverside, California, which the presenters said "saved 24462 minutes" and processed 12,231 alarm notifications in 2024; presenters urged attendees to request case studies for local validation.

Implementing ASAP requires cooperation from the ECC’s CAD vendor, exchange of GIS/geodata so vendor addresses can be prevalidated, and allocation of staff for training and testing (the presenters described a train‑the‑trainer model). Presenters said Mission Critical Partners can act as a concierge and help contact CAD vendors; they also said ASAP has a one-time implementation fee and that CAD vendors may charge recurring maintenance; the group said costs are tiered by population and offered to provide proposals on request.

The presenters described an APCO-based alarm-severity standard used by monitoring centers that assigns levels (described in the session as level 1 through level 4) and said work is under way to add severity levels for active-threat and fire to allow CADs to trigger appropriate incident codes automatically.

The session concluded with an invitation to scan a QR code or complete a discovery form for proposals, a note that presenters can brief agency decision makers, and an offer to share case-study contacts. The host said the session recording will be posted to the organization’s YouTube channel.