Alarm Monitoring & Security Systems
The industry — Security systems services (except locksmiths)
Base industry report for 561621 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 1,486
- Under 10 employeesA
- 74%
- Establishments · USA
- 7,042
- Employment · USA
- 125,873
- Payroll · USA
- $8.5B
Of 1,486 Canadian establishments with employees, 74% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
One thing must be trueEntry turns on a single condition that can be named and tested before much is spent. Clear it and this becomes an execution question; fail it and no amount of operating skill helps.
Displace an incumbent the screen found well defended — payments attached to the workflow, data that does not leave, a contract that renews itself. Share here means giving a buyer a reason to break something that currently works, which is a higher bar than being better.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 5
The binding constraint — incumbent vulnerability
Recurring monthly revenue is the whole asset and the incumbents buy it by the account, at multiples a start-up cannot outbid while also paying for installation up front. Attrition is the number that decides everything, and it is worst in the first two years — exactly when a new entrant's book is young. DIY cameras have meanwhile taken the residential entry point where a small operator would have started.
Installation is local but monitoring is centralised and accounts trade nationally: books of recurring monthly revenue are bought and sold at a multiple of RMR. The unit of value is therefore the account, not the territory.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 1 of 4 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 4 named · 1 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADT Inc.NYSE: ADTA | $5.1B | — | FY2025 total revenue, per the 10-K filed 2 March 2026 |
| TELUS SmartHome SecurityC | not disclosed | — | Operates the former ADT Canada business. TELUS does not break the security line out, and the Canadian ownership was not verified against a filing for this record. |
| Vivint Smart HomeC | not disclosed | — | Acquired by NRG Energy; not separately disclosed and not opened for this record. |
| SimpliSafe / Ring and the DIY camera shelfC | not disclosed | — | No monitoring contract, no RMR, and no dealer to buy out — the entry point a small operator used to start from. Private; not disclosed. |
Evidence
Evidence. ADT's FY2025 figures — total revenue $5,128.6M, monitoring and related services $4,354M, installation and product $775M, end-of-period RMR $359M, gross revenue attrition 13.1% and revenue payback 2.3 years — were read in Exhibit 99.1 to the 8-K filed 2 March 2026 (the Q4/full-year 2025 earnings release) and cross-checked against the 10-K XBRL filed the same day; the former commercial and solar businesses sit in discontinued operations there, so these are continuing-operations figures. Tier A. The Canadian establishment and size-band counts are Statistics Canada, December 2023, and they source how many firms exist, not what they earn. What is NOT sourced: TELUS's ownership of the former ADT Canada book and NRG's ownership of Vivint are stated from general knowledge and were not opened against a filing here — both are tiered C on the record. No Canadian attrition or RMR series was found; ADT's 13.1% is a US figure used as the nearest measured proxy. The cut factor remains analyst judgment.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
'more than 1000 member organizations in 10 Regions' per its About page; runs the Security Canada shows
Largest US trade association for electronic security and life safety; founded 1948; member companies employ 500,000+, per its About page
Trade association for professional alarm-monitoring centres; sets the Five Diamond designation and ASAP-to-PSAP service. No member count stated
CANASA's regional trade shows; 2026 editions in Laval QC (29 Apr), Richmond BC (3 Jun) and Toronto, per the site
Largest North American security trade show; 5-9 Apr 2027, Venetian Expo, Las Vegas, per the site
Annual finance and M&A gathering for alarm, monitoring and medical-alert companies; 4-6 Feb 2027, Palm Beach FL
Trade magazine for security dealers and integrators; has Monitoring and Financial Services sections
Canadian security-channel magazine for dealers, installers and integrators since 1996. Site reset every automated connection; search results show it live
IPCamTalk (DIY camera forum, ipcamtalk.com) is very active but blocks automated access and is more hobbyist than operator, so it is not listed. Security Sales & Integration and Security Info Watch are also live US publications.