The category, explained
Duress alarm systems.
A duress alarm system lets a person under threat summon help without alerting the person threatening them. The button is the visible part - but the system is what decides whether help actually arrives. Here's how the pieces fit, and what separates one that works from one that just beeps.
Trigger, communication, response
Every duress alarm system is three things working together. Get any one wrong and the whole thing fails at the worst moment.
The trigger
How the alarm gets raised. A fixed button under a desk, a wearable card or watch, a phone gesture - or automatically, when a fall or a missed check-in fires the alarm the worker couldn't. The best triggers are reachable without a phone and silent, so pressing one doesn't escalate the threat.
More on triggers ›The communication
What travels when the alarm fires: the worker's identity, live location, and often live audio or video. Over 4G, Wi-Fi, or a paired phone, with fallback when one drops out. Indoors, this is where BLE positioning matters - responders need the floor and room, not just the street.
More on location ›The response
Who answers, and how fast. This is the part most systems under-build. An alarm that emails a manager in a meeting has failed. A monitored system routes every alarm to a staffed, accredited centre - in our published data, a median of seven seconds to a trained operator, around the clock.
More on response ›What a duress alarm looks like
A duress alarm can be a card, a watch, a body-worn camera, or an app - matched to the risk and the work.
How to tell a real system from a beeper
- Ask for the median response time. A specific number (ours is 7 seconds) is a system; "fast" is marketing.
- Ask what the accreditation is. ASIAL grading in Australia, NSI Gold or BS 8484 in the UK - an independent audit of the monitoring centre, not the vendor's word.
- Ask what happens when the worker can't press anything. Fall detection, missed check-ins and timers cover the scenarios where a button is out of reach.
- Ask where the alarm lands. A staffed centre, or a dashboard someone might check? The response is the product.