Perimeter security defines protection layers against both physical ingress and information egress of your property. Defining Your Perimeters If you have a single family home in a fenced yard, you might define your fence as the outer perimeter and the walls of your home as the inside perimeter.  In an highly urbanized environment, you might not have a yard and a fence.  The walls of your home might be your only perimeter.  On the other hand, if your home is a farm house far from civilization, you might define an outer perimeter far from your house which is not protected [...]

There is one simple rule of telephone security: Never say anything on the telephone that you would not want your worst enemy to hear. Landline telephones are pathetically simple to tap. Almost all mobile phone systems utilize security systems which have been compromised. VoIP telephone calls can be tapped by anyone with access to the network. In addition, you don’t know the environment of the person on the other end of a telephone conversation. Perhaps someone is pointing a gun at them, or perhaps they are talking on a mobile phone while standing in line at a bank, or maybe [...]

Second only to air, water is one of our most basic human needs.  Nonetheless, most people who have grown up and lived in the Western world have come to take clean water for granted.  They open the faucet and clean water comes pouring out as if by magic. At the same time, 3.575 million people die each year from water-related diseases.  Most of these people live in places where there is no tap water or the tap water cannot be trusted to be clean. Ask yourself two questions: Should I trust my tap water now? Will I be able to [...]

Home fires kill approximately 2,500 Americans every year and injure five times that many. They also cause more than six billion dollars a year in property damage. Burns and smoke inhalation damage can be extremely unpleasant, even if you do survive. Children five and under are twice as likely to die in a house fire as adults. Nearly 100% of these tragedies are preventable. Fire security begins with preventing unintended fires from occurring in the first place. Grab a notebook and a pen and walk through your house, conducting a fire audit of each room. Note the presence of any [...]

Real estate agents quip that the three most important things in real estate are location, location, location.  In a lot of ways, this is more true for security than for real estate in general. Weather and Geology There are many ways in which Mother Nature can ruin your day: Earthquakes Floods Hurricanes Typhoons Tornadoes Volcanos The presence of each of these items can be, and should be, researched before you choose a location as your home base. Earthquake information can be found at the U.S. Geological Service Earthquake Center.  Most of the other events can be researched by searching through [...]

Glass areas present a tempting appearance of weakness in any building security plan. Safety glass, although never perfect, can make these areas of apparent weakness stronger than many standard walls. The goal of safety glass is not to “never” fail”, but to make failures harder to force and to fail safely when failure does occur. For example, one of the important functions of safety glass is to prevent shards of glass from becoming dangerous shrapnel when the glass eventually does fail. Perfectly indestructible safety glass, if it is ever developed, will focus attackers attentions on defeating window frames and surrounding [...]

Steel security doors are superior in most ways to wooden doors, but they are not always practical.  Your existing wooden door may be decorative, it may be a non-standard size, or it may simply be already paid for.  When you can’t replace a wooden door, you can sometimes augment it with steel reinforcement. You’ll need to buy a large steel plate and then drill holes for the doorknob, the peephole, and the mounting screws. The thickness of steel plate depends upon the strength of your door hinges and door material. Here are approximate weights for an average 3′ x6′ 8″ [...]