This one’s really simple. The current system is a bad one because if the email password changes or internet connectivity gets interrupted or the system sending the email dies (eg: power supply failure), the system fails because on any lack of signal it’s assumed that everything’s good. That’s a terrible design. Here’s a better one:

- External system polls the monitor and records levels.

- Local system reaches out to external system and fetches status.

- Someone has the responsibility to do rounds and record the status indicated by the local system.

External system down or indicates unacceptable levels, monitor unreachable, etc.? Local system shows a failure. Investigate. Local system down? Investigate.

You can even add redundancy by having a manager double check that the responsible employee is checking off the status plus the manager can do a daily sweep as a fallback. Throw something like PagerDuty into the mix and have multi-channel notifications on any failure that escalate over time.