A continuation of the previous 10 tips to help ensure you have adequate security measures in place.

1. A good thing to do at the very least once a year is take a walk around and through your property with a close friend or neighbor who is not too familiar with your house. Start outside and ask yourself “how would I best break in? The purpose of not doing it alone is your pal may spot things you’ll overlook. Return the favour and complete a survey for your friend. This is a cost effective way of getting some lateral thinking going.

2. The old routine uhm routine – Besides the obvious “lived-in” look, don’t get into a habit of only doing certain things only when you’re not home. Chances are good you can tell when your neighbour isn’t home. Remember it’s a burglar’s job to know the same things. Most professional… Continue reading →

5. Practical Home Security Tips

10 Basic tips to help you increase your safety levels. Many of these tips are things you would know or have heard of, and we have tried to make them easy to implement, and cost effective tips. These are only applicable to your house, not the yard or outer perimeter defence.

1.     A good thing to have on all outside doors, is an inside safety catch.These come in different shapes and sizes (see example below). The idea is to not only lock the door’s own lock and the Yale lock, but to then also have a safety latch or safety catch for that extra security. This can cause would be “door breakers” to spend more time on opening the door, causing more noise and warning for you inside.

2.     Keys in door locks – never leave the key in the lock –… Continue reading →

<< tip 3 | tip 5 >>

4. Last Line of Defence

So what next? You now have your defensive lines in position.

1. Being your awareness level – of the surrounds and of your immediate property.

2. Being the early warning system alarm that will warn you inside your house once you have intruders on your property and where they are.

3. You have your tactical safety plan worked out. Your family knows what to do in case those alarms start going off.

It has come to this – you are now the last line of defence. Having had the early warning, you had the chance to contact help (security co, the police, neighbours) (hopefully you called every man and his dog because in tip 2 you have learnt to get to know the whole neighbourhood).

But what happens in the next 5 or 10 minutes until someone actually… Continue reading →

3. Awareness – the next level

After having talked about general awareness in tip 1 (click here), we then went on to talk about layered security. We now want to get back to what encompasses the whole idea of security and being secure.

There is a saying that a man’s home is his castle. Let’s make this practical. Imagine for one moment your home as a castle. I know, having a drawbridge and a moat with flesh-eating crocodiles might not be so practical in 2010, but let’s look deeper into this. In days of kings and castle, the king was surrounded by people living and working in his kingdom, so in many instances you had to travel through a town before getting to the castle itself. Might this be an example of layered security? Let’s assume this for now.

In modern times we have become so modernized and… Continue reading →

THINGS A BURGLAR WON’T TELL YOU

1. Of course I look familiar. I was here just last week cleaning your carpets, painting your shutters, or delivering your new refrigerator.
2. Hey, thanks for letting me use the bathroom when I was working in your yard last week. While I was in there, I unlatched the back window to make my return a little easier.
3. Love those flowers. That tells me you have taste… and taste means there are nice things inside. Those yard toys your kids leave out always make me wonder what type of gaming system they have.
4. Yes, I really do look for newspapers piled up on the driveway. And I might leave a pizza flyer in your front door to see how long it takes you to remove it.
5. If it snows while you’re out of town, get a neighbour to create car and foot tracks into the house.… Continue reading →

2. Layered Security

Layered security – what is that? In tip 1 we looked at awareness. We discussed how awareness can help you steer clear from possible scenarios/situations BEFORE you become or can become involved. And this is the type of security we believe in – being pro-active. We use the same model for our security systems. Layered security.

We feel that your alarm system should not act only as deterrent or as responsive system, but this should act as an early warning system. It is no use your alarm goes off once the intruder is already in your house. We feel you need warning to prepare yourself and your family on the inside. (We will get to the preparation a bit later on). For now, we will discuss layered security and getting enough warning to move to a safe spot and prepare for whatever might be coming.

Therefore you… Continue reading →

1. Awareness

Security and safety starts long before it has to be responsive. The best deterrent is to be preventative. We know that it is not 100% possible to prevent any and all crime, but we also believe that in being aware, you might have the edge in preventing or avoiding potential harmful situations and thus preventing a crime or harm from actually happening to you.

Awareness is where it all starts. Let’s look at an example or two. If you drive out of your driveway in the morning to work, are you aware of any suspicious movement or people in your immediate surroundings? Or are you busy applying make-up, tuning the radio or focussing on what to do? Given, we cannot be aware 100% of the time, but if you look at crime stats, there are certain times when you need to be switched on.

These are times like… Continue reading →