Comment on M2M communication failure April 15, 2026

KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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Comment on M2M communication failure
April 15, 2026

Comment on M2M communication failure from article on April 14, 2026

Ken,
   Every single one of my customers is on a signed Kirschenbaum All-In-One. Thank goodness. Those contracts paid for themselves 1,000 times over yesterday during a massive global M2M and CLSS outage. Your contract has the following clause:
   “Subscriber acknowledges that signals which are transmitted over telephone lines, wire, air waves, internet, Managed Facilities Voice Networks, VOIP, or other modes of communication pass through communication networks wholly beyond the control of Company and are not maintained by Company, except Company may own the radio network and Company shall not be responsible for any failure which prevents transmission signals or data from reaching the Monitoring Center or damages arising therefrom…”
   Today would be a very, very bad day to be a company without a Kirschenbaum All-In-One.
   Here are some details of what happened:
   An incident appears to have occurred at M2M in Belgium at 10PM on 4/2/26. Both my customers and I were unaware and unnotified of the outage until customers began reporting "Comm Faults" around 9AM on 4/3/26.
   I received the following email from M2M, but they didn't send it until I requested info at 9:30AM on 4/3/26:
   "We are currently experiencing an issue affecting our database and admin portal. Our engineering team is actively investigating and working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We will provide an update within the next hour or sooner if more information becomes available."
   Additionally, Honeywell CLSS sent an email reporting an outage at 11AM with a follow up email reporting that the problem was fixed at 12:30PM. I received no trouble reports from any CLSS customers during that 90 minute period.
   There appeared to be intermittent M2M spurts of coming online and then dropping again between 1PM and 5PM on 4/3/26. These starts-and-stops caused customer fire alarms to Restore and then Comm Fault over and over again repeatedly. Therefore "acknowledge and silence" was less than useful and left numerous customers frustrated. During this period, some customers reported getting bombarded with CS alerts for Restoral and then Comm Failure.
   Whenever possible we advised customers to go on Firewatch.
   The following M2M email went out on 4/3/26 at 3:30PM:
   "We are currently addressing a network issue that has impacted certain parts of our platform infrastructure and caused a service disruption to certain customers. To protect the integrity of our systems and prevent potential additional impact, we temporarily isolated and shut down selected network segments. In order to best continue to serve our customers, mitigation measures have been implemented, and a phased service restoration is now underway, with priority given to critical system functions. We are actively monitoring system performance and signal integrity as services are restored. You may continue to experience intermittent connectivity issues or delayed communications as system functionality is restored and traffic normalizes. We will continue to share updates as stability is fully restored. We appreciate your understanding, patience, and continued cooperation."
   We began to see fire alarms Restore to All Systems Normal at around 1:03AM on 4/4/26. This is an interesting time because 1AM tests on Line 1 came in as "Missed Test" but 2AM tests on Line 2 came in as "All Systems Normal."
   Some thoughts to everyone to mull over:
   1) I'll be interested to see if we ever learn the details about the cause. Was it an overnight server update that crashed the system, like that Verizon Cellular Voice issue back in January? Or was it bad actors, either in-house or rogue states? Was it just an accident? (Hey Bob, why did you unplug your mouse?)
   2) This incident is a real weak spot in the global fire alarm industry. What good are dual path communicators if the utility company itself crashes? I'm not even sure what good options there are when new construction buildings don't even come with a POTS service entrance anymore.
   3) I'd be curious to know the number of customers M2M and CLSS combined that were affected.
   4) Where there any losses nationwide during the outage?
   5) When the system came back online, all those alarms and signal events that were being stored in the panels suddenly surged out. Was the global network able to handle that surge of 27 hours worth of signals all being transmitted in one minute? Did signals get lost enroute? How did Centrals Station dispatchers handle that in-rush? Are CS receivers designed to take that kind of in-rush? How did Fire Departments handle the fact that every fire alarm from the past 27 hours suddenly came crashing in at 1:03AM. I'll bet FDNY was a spicy meatball last night at 1AM.
   Ken, thank you for everything you and your team does!
Eric G

Response

   If I recall correctly M2M signals transmit through foreign countries. If that is the case it seems to me to add an additional unnecessary element of risk. Assessing the reliability of M2M is for you, and you should be relying on your own experience and expertise or the expertise of recognized experts.
   You all face too many unknown risks; not much sense adding risks you do know about. I should add that I am not advocating what risk M2M adds; that's something you experts need to sort out on your own.
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
www.KirschenbaumEsq.com