Duress™ Operations Centre
The Duress Operations Centre is our A1 Graded, 24/7 Escalation Centre.
DOC Operators triage thousands of activations every month.
Duress Operations Centre (DOC)
The Duress Operations Centre is an A1 ASIAL graded monitoring centre located in Australia.
It monitors all of our clients across Australia and New Zealand around the clock, and are authorised to request emergency services on their behalf.
It is located in a threat proof bunker, with redundant power, back up batteries and generators.
It has multiple redundant data lines, each with redundant cellular fallback.
In the event of multiple mission-critical failures (which to date has not occurred), a second site at another location is shadowing all incoming activations.
Duress Operators
Duress Operators are highly trained security personnel, who receive monthly updated training and quarterly reviews.
They regularly run war game scenarios, and are engaged in specific training around discrete emergency activations, lone worker activations and family violence.
A significant vetting process occurs before they are permitted to work in the centre (including Police Checks), and also require a security license.
As with any sensitive centre, all access to the DOC by operators is logged and overseen by a compliance manager who is on-site 24/7. They have no access to any customer data (which is not stored on site) except for when an activation occurs and they can only access information that assists in the verification and escalation of an activation.
Emergency Triage
Duress Operators follow a strict verification protocol to ensure they provide the optimal response to an activation.
When an activation occurs, the Duress platform monitors all information about the Operator, including when they began monitoring, when they escalated to Emergency Services, correspondence with Emergency Services and when they notified the nominated people at the organisation.
All of these metrics of the triage are not only logged and stored in the DOC, but they are also available to each organisation in Pathfinder, the Duress management dashboard.
When an activation occurs, Operators are looking for signs of obvious escalation, such as no movement, if the device is located on the floor, or if they can see or hear a physically or verbally abusive individual.
They are also looking for non-obvious escalation triggers, such as whispering, silence or sporadic movements from the user.
Whilst most organisations use the default escalation triage for their teams, they can also specify a custom escalation (e.g. As soon as an activation occurs call this number).
Emergency Escalation
When an Operator determines that an individual urgently needs assistance, they use their A1 credentials to urgently request emergency services.
They state their Alpha code to identify themselves as the DOC and to establish that they have a verified emergency as a matter of priority.
Emergency Cancellation & Go-Words
If an Operator determines that the activation is not an emergency, they will follow the confirmation protocol to cancel the emergency.
The confirmation protocol involves confirming the user is safe, which may be done with a phone call, subject to the network carrier. Operators can use the information on the user’s profile and compare it to the activation video, as well as ask identifying questions to confirm they are talking to the user.
During the confirmation, the user may say a go-word.
Go-words indicate that they urgently need assistance but are unable to say so.
Common go-words for organisations are pizza, uber and plumber.
You can add your Go-words in Pathfinder, the management portal.
24/7 Monitoring
Duress Operations Centre
Duress Operations Centre is our A1 ASIAL monitoring centre, the highest certification in Australia. When an emergency is activated, our Operators receive live video, audio and location, and triage the activation to give your team the quickest effective response.
In an emergency, Operators are authorised to urgently request Police or Ambulance on your behalf.
If they can see the situation has de-escalated, or can see you are just testing and that you are safe, they will call you to confirm if you are safe, subject to network carrier.
Self Monitoring
Monitor your own Activations
Some organisations have the ability to monitor their own Emergencies, and Duress allows you to easily manage and monitor your own emergencies through Pathfinder, our online management portal.
In addition to live video, audio and location streaming through to our Management Portal, Pathfinder, your nominated people will also receive emergency alerts on their phones.
Duress is also integrated into Mastermind and Patriot, allowing your existing monitoring centre to monitor your Duress activations.