Responding to critical events through threat levels

If a dangerous situation arises while you are monitoring your system (for example, a fire or shooting), you can respond by changing the state of the entire Security Center system or specific areas, using threat levels.

Before you begin

To set threat levels, you need the Set threat level user privilege. If the Threat levels icon () is not displayed in the notification tray, you can show it from the Options dialog box.

What you should know

When you set a threat level, you could force a complete lock down, temporarily override lock schedules, trigger an alarm, deny certain cardholders access to areas, and so on. The exact effects of setting a threat level depend on how it is configured in Config Tool. For information about configuring threat levels, see the Security Center Administrator Guide.

To set a threat level:

Open the Threat levels dialog box one of the following ways:
- In the notification tray, double-click the Threat levels () icon.
- From the home page, click Tools > Threat levels .
Do one of the following:
- To set a threat level on the entire system, select a threat level from the System threat level drop-down list.
- To set a threat level on a specific area, select a threat level from the drop-down list next to the desired entity.
In the confirmation dialog box that opens, click Apply.
Click Close.

The Threat levels icon in the notification tray turns red (). If you set a threat level on the entire system, the background of Security Desk turns the color of the threat level. Additional effects of setting the threat level depend on how the threat level was configured.

TIP: You can view the current threat level status of areas in the System status task.

Example

If a fire broke out and you set the Fire threat level, the fire alarm could be triggered, all doors could be unlocked, cameras could start recording, and so on.