Security Magazine logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • Sign In
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Security Magazine logo
  • NEWS
    • Security Newswire
    • Technologies & Solutions
  • MANAGEMENT
    • Leadership Management
    • Enterprise Services
    • Security Education & Training
    • Logical Security
    • Security & Business Resilience
    • Profiles in Excellence
  • PHYSICAL
    • Access Management
    • Fire & Life Safety
    • Identity Management
    • Physical Security
    • Video Surveillance
    • Case Studies (Physical)
  • CYBER
    • Cybersecurity News
    • More
  • BLOG
  • COLUMNS
    • Cyber Tactics
    • Leadership & Management
    • Security Talk
    • Career Intelligence
    • Leader to Leader
    • Cybersecurity Education & Training
  • EXCLUSIVES
    • Annual Guarding Report
    • Most Influential People in Security
    • The Security Benchmark Report
    • The Security Leadership Issue
    • Top Guard and Security Officer Companies
    • Top Cybersecurity Leaders
    • Women in Security
  • SECTORS
    • Arenas / Stadiums / Leagues / Entertainment
    • Banking/Finance/Insurance
    • Construction, Real Estate, Property Management
    • Education: K-12
    • Education: University
    • Government: Federal, State and Local
    • Hospitality & Casinos
    • Hospitals & Medical Centers
    • Infrastructure:Electric,Gas & Water
    • Ports: Sea, Land, & Air
    • Retail/Restaurants/Convenience
    • Transportation/Logistics/Supply Chain/Distribution/ Warehousing
  • EVENTS
    • Industry Events
    • Webinars
    • Solutions by Sector
    • Security 500 Conference
  • MEDIA
    • Videos
      • Cybersecurity & Geopolitical Discussion
      • Ask Me Anything (AMA) Series
    • Podcasts
    • Polls
    • Photo Galleries
  • MORE
    • Call for Entries
    • Classifieds & Job Listings
    • Continuing Education
    • Newsletter
    • Sponsor Insights
    • Store
    • White Papers
  • EMAG
    • eMagazine
    • This Month's Content
    • Advertise
  • SIGN UP!
Security Enterprise Services

How Security Can Better Support 9-1-1 Dispatching

By Todd Piett
911 Dispatch
January 7, 2015

Aside from dialing 9-1-1 during an emergency, most people are not familiar with how emergency dispatch works. This often also holds true for facility security personnel. Whether a gas leak or armed employee, it is important that enterprise security personnel understand some of the technology and process behind our national emergency number and response system for their own professional purposes. With this in mind, the following should be considered.

9-1-1 calls are routed based on a caller’s location to one of approximately 6,400 public safety answering points (PSAPs). 9-1-1 calls from different facilities may go to one or more different PSAPs, even if those facilities are within the same city. Those calls are answered by professionals trained to quickly analyze the situation and dispatch the correct resources to the correct location. The 9-1-1 call-taker/dispatcher answering the call has access to all of the different responders in the area (law enforcement, fire and EMS) via radio and other communication tools. Many centers also have tracking systems that allow the dispatcher to see locations and statuses of responders in real-time.

A dispatcher, within seconds of receiving a call and while still asking questions of the caller to effectively ascertain the situation, is already directing necessary resources to the scene of the incident and engaging others as needed. It is important to understand that 9-1-1 is effectively “incident command” for the length of many incidents, including most active shooter scenarios that average less than 12 minutes. 9-1-1 is skillfully coordinating the response as units arrive on scene, assess the situation, report back and request additional resources.

In order for enterprise security professionals to develop or modify emergency response plans, there are a number of specific points to remember about the answering of 9-1-1 calls and the dispatching of first responders.

Directly Contact 9-1-1

When a person does not have the ability to communicate directly with 9-1-1, response gets delayed and confusion can be introduced. It is critical that direct verbal communication with 9-1-1 happens. To effectively manage the response, it is vital that the PSAP has direct communication with those involved in the incident to glean real-time information. Direct communication is the fastest and most effective way to get the right resources dispatched in the most expedient manner.

Routing emergency calls from corporate phone lines to internal security is discouraged, and PBXs should always be configured to allow direct 9-1-1 dialing without a prefix (e.g. 9-911). A number of recent tragedies have highlighted the risk of impeding the trained response of people to dial 9-1-1. Remember that employees and visitors may use cellphones or corporate lines, and in either case, will very likely be under stress and revert to common, learned behaviors and not special processes.

Especially for larger campuses with dedicated security resources, there is an understandable need to be aware of incidents and calls for emergency service made to 9-1-1. An option to consider are solutions that don’t impede direct dialing to 9-1-1, but instead, simultaneously notify on-site resources when a call is made. Solutions exist that work with Voice over IP (VOIP), landline and mobile phones and are very cost effective.

Understand Where Emergency Calls are Answered

In some locales, landline and mobile phones may actually route to different PSAPs, affecting the response process. When determining a response plan for a facility, coordinating with 9-1-1 and public safety to understand how calls are routed locally, as well as understanding response procedures, will significantly enhance the response should an incident occur.

Coordination with your local agencies can be an important check in making sure phones calls are being correctly routed and providing the right data to 9-1-1. Because of the virtual nature of today’s sophisticated PBXs and the relatively old technology used by most 9-1-1 centers, the information displayed to 9-1-1 can be misleading (e.g. displaying an IT office location – not the actual caller’s location) or even cause false routing. Larger enterprises often have sophisticated solutions for keeping the data delivered to 9-1-1 current (called PS-ALI), but direct coordination with local responders is always a good idea.

This coordination can also be invaluable in providing public safety agencies with specific instructions relative to your facility, such as access points, gate codes and security personnel contact information. Visitors to your facility may have difficulty accurately assessing and describing where they are, so consider signage that helps them communicate their location in a way that can be understood by 9-1-1 and responders. Some locales even have systems in place such as Smart911 that allow facility owners to provide and maintain real-time information that is displayed to 9-1-1 in the event of an emergency.

Uncoordinated Responses Can Be Dangerous

An uncoordinated response to an incident is dangerous, whether between on site security personnel and responding agencies or even among public safety agencies themselves. Self dispatching is the process of officers responding to an incident without having been directed to do so by a central dispatch/incident command point that coordinates the response. Public safety agencies strongly discourage the practice:

  • “The use of self-dispatched resources is highly discouraged.” – FEMA, NIMS resource manual
  • “Self-dispatch can be common practice in many areas, but it is unacceptable. When mutual aid agreements are effective, needed units will respond properly and unsolicited aid will only get in the way. Dispatchers should prohibit units listening in from self-dispatching to the incident scene. Only units properly responding to a mutual aid or automatic aid agreement should be allowed to participate in incident response.” – Department of Homeland Security, Lessons Learned Information Sharing

“If you have people self-dispatching who are not in uniform, you increase the risk of blue-on-blue shootings, and you end up with more people calling the police to report that they saw someone with a gun, which can add to the confusion,” said Howard County (Maryland) Police Chief William J. McMahon when providing lessons learned on the January 2014 Columbia Mall Shooting. According to the Director of the Office of Unified Communications in Washington, D.C., Jennifer Greene: “While luckily no one was killed as a direct result of self-dispatch during the Navy Yard Shootings, it definitely added an extra dimension of risk and overhead to the entire response as we attempted to identify and manage unknown armed individuals that were on scene.”

These same warnings can also apply when there is a lack of coordination between on-site security personnel and responding agencies. While not self-dispatching per se, security personnel need to closely collaborate with law enforcement dispatch and on-site responders. It is rare that public safety agencies and facility security personnel have sufficient experience working together to effectively collaborate during a stressful incident, and the risks of unfamiliar and uncoordinated forces engaging in an incident together are real. Local policies should give your security team clear guidance on ceding incident oversight to public safety responders.

Custom Processes are Risky

People tend toward what they know and are familiar with doing. This is particularly true for both people in an emergency and those answering their calls for help.

The implications for security organizations are twofold: First, remember that many people will (and should!) call 9-1-1 directly for help. It is ingrained. Make sure your processes embrace that, not discourage it.

Second, keep in mind that a single PSAP supports many people and different facilities. While you may feel your campus or facility is unique, trying to create custom processes that don’t fit well into an existing dispatch process increases the chance for error. Even if your local PSAP is willing to work with you around special procedures, keep customization to a minimum.

Expecting a 9-1-1 dispatcher to remember to do something different for your facility, even if legally permissible (which it often is not), is adding risk. It is far better to modify your processes to match their response than vise-versa.

In summary, 9-1-1 is a critical component of an effective emergency response plan. When working together as a team, 9-1-1, responders, facility managers and enterprise security personnel can improve reaction time to incidents, reduce complexity, and ensure better outcomes. Understanding the capabilities and limitations of the agencies you rely on to respond to emergencies can help you create more effective emergency response plans.

 

Share This Story

Looking for a reprint of this article?
From high-res PDFs to custom plaques, order your copy today!

Todd piett 2

Todd Piett is the CEO at Rave Mobile Safety, a provider of critical communication and data platform that can help save lives. He is responsible for product development and marketing for Rave’s solutions, which are used by thousands of public safety agencies and enterprises. In addition to holding 15 safety technology patents, Piett regularly speaks at public safety conferences nationwide.  He graduated with honors from the United States Military Academy at West Point and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. After graduation from West Point, he served seven years in the U.S. Army as an aviation officer.

Recommended Content

JOIN TODAY
To unlock your recommendations.

Already have an account? Sign In

  • Security's Top Cybersecurity Leaders 2024

    Security's Top Cybersecurity Leaders 2024

    Security magazine's Top Cybersecurity Leaders 2024 award...
    Cybersecurity
    By: Security Staff
  • cyber brain

    The intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is a valuable cybersecurity...
    Columns
    By: Pam Nigro
  • artificial intelligence AI graphic

    Assessing the pros and cons of AI for cybersecurity

    Artificial intelligence (AI) has significant implications...
    Logical Security
    By: Charles Denyer
Subscribe For Free!
  • Security eNewsletter & Other eNews Alerts
  • eMagazine Subscriptions
  • Manage My Preferences
  • Online Registration
  • Mobile App
  • Subscription Customer Service

More Videos

Sponsored Content

Sponsored Content is a special paid section where industry companies provide high quality, objective, non-commercial content around topics of interest to the Security audience. All Sponsored Content is supplied by the advertising company and any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily reflect the views of Security or its parent company, BNP Media. Interested in participating in our Sponsored Content section? Contact your local rep!

close
  • Crisis Response Team
    Sponsored byEverbridge

    Automate or Fall Behind – Crisis Response at the Speed of Risk

  • Perimeter security
    Sponsored byAMAROK

    Why Property Security is the New Competitive Advantage

  • Duty of Care
    Sponsored byAMAROK

    Integrating Technology and Physical Security to Advance Duty of Care

Popular Stories

Pills spilled

More than 20,000 sensitive medical records exposed

Laptop in darkness

Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report shows rise in cyberattacks

Coding on screen

Research reveals mass scanning and exploitation campaigns

White post office truck

Department of Labor Sues USPS Over Texas Whistleblower Termination

Computer with binary code hovering nearby

Cyberattacks Targeting US Increased by 136%

2025 Security Benchmark banner

Events

September 29, 2025

Global Security Exchange (GSX)

 

November 17, 2025

SECURITY 500 Conference

This event is designed to provide security executives, government officials and leaders of industry with vital information on how to elevate their programs while allowing attendees to share their strategies and solutions with other security industry executives.

View All Submit An Event

Products

Security Culture: A How-to Guide for Improving Security Culture and Dealing with People Risk in Your Organisation

Security Culture: A How-to Guide for Improving Security Culture and Dealing with People Risk in Your Organisation

See More Products

Related Articles

  • dataminr-connected tissue

    Predictions: Safety and Security Trends for 2020 and Beyond

    See More
×

Sign-up to receive top management & result-driven techniques in the industry.

Join over 20,000+ industry leaders who receive our premium content.

SIGN UP TODAY!
  • RESOURCES
    • Advertise
    • Contact Us
    • Store
    • Want More
  • SIGN UP TODAY
    • Create Account
    • eMagazine
    • eNewsletter
    • Customer Service
    • Manage Preferences
  • SERVICES
    • Marketing Services
    • Reprints
    • Market Research
    • List Rental
    • Survey/Respondent Access
  • STAY CONNECTED
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • YouTube
    • X (Twitter)
  • PRIVACY
    • PRIVACY POLICY
    • TERMS & CONDITIONS
    • DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION
    • PRIVACY REQUEST
    • ACCESSIBILITY

Copyright ©2025. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing