A solution for providing premises monitoring whereby monitoring devices (cameras, e.g.) are connected to a network and, upon detecting motion within their field of view, send a notification to a smartphone app. The smartphone app provides indications of a location of a particular monitoring device triggering the event notification, a time/date of the event, and a type of event. A user of the smartphone app may receive a real-time video stream from the monitoring device, and may interact with a person who triggered the event using the smartphone's speaker and microphone in conjunction with a speaker and/or a microphone integrated with the monitoring device. A button of the smartphone app enables an event to be escalated to a monitoring center, and if an event is not reviewed by a user within a certain time threshold the event may be configured to be automatically escalated to the monitoring center.