After the success of an installed NightOwl Remote Video System at an Abbotsford construction site a few weeks ago, one of the neighbouring construction sites that had been relying on a Security Guard to patrol their site had us install NightOwl for them as well.

It took less than a week for the system to pay off. On July 21st, the NightOwl system send us video alarms showing three suspects trying to gain access to the construction site through the front gate. Our Kerrisdale Operations Centre team immediately dispatched the Abbotsford Police, who were able to respond and apprehend the suspects before anything was stolen or damaged from the site.

Click below to see what the video alarms looked like…

It’s important to note that the resolution of the NightOwl video alarms is intentionally low. That’s because the system is completely wireless and is optimized to be able to detect unauthorized activity and send a video clip to us in the shortest possible timeframe. We only need the video to be clear enough to confirm that a human is in an area that they are not supposed to be so that we can dispatch the Police to a verified crime in progress.

Over the past few months, we’ve installed NightOwl systems throughout the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley. NightOwl does not require electricity, telephone lines, an internet connection or any other infrastructure to work. It is a completely self-contained system that we can set-up and monitor anywhere.

We rent NightOwl on a week-to-week basis, making it an incredibly easy way to maximize security for a construction site or any place requiring temporary security.

Do you have a site where NightOwl could help? Let us know… we’d be happy to set-up a demo and show you how simple it is to get started.

CTV ran a story last night in response to a Vancouver Police advisory regarding an increase in thefts from construction sites in Vancouver over the past couple months as well as a recent Vancouver Island theft where more than $100,000.00 of equipment and copper were stolen from an unprotected site.

As part of the story, they came to our Operations Centre in Kerrisdale to get a demonstration of Provident NightOwl to see how it can solve the issue of providing complete security for construction sites on either a temporary or long-term basis.

Earlier this year, Provident introduced a new service called NightOwl. It’s a completely wireless, remote video alarm system that is able to detect activity and then send live video alarms to our Operations Centre in Kerrisdale.

NightOwl is primarily focused on the construction market because it is so easy to deploy and is much cheaper (and more effective) than a full-time Security Guard. However, we’ve also started using NightOwl in commercial sites, vacation properties and other locations that are outside of our guaranteed five minute response zone.

Some of the features that make NightOwl such an interesting service/product is that it does not require any electricity, telephone lines, internet connection or any other infrastructure to work. It can detect activity in absolute darkness and sends video alarms to us wirelessly.

The video quality is intentionally low-resolution (read: crappy) because it has been optimized to provide quick detection and to be able to be transmitted to us very quickly. When we receive a NightOwl video alarm in our Kerrisdale Operations Centre, all we need to determine is whether the cause of the alarm is a human or not. If we see anything suspicious, we can call the Police and report a verified crime in progress… which gets a very quick response (as opposed to a regular alarm without verification which gets very, very slow – if any – response from the Police).

Click on the video below to watch a video recap from a burglary on Monday, June 20th 2011 where NightOwl detected two crooks at an Abbotsford construction site. From our Operations Centre in Kerrisdale, we directed the Abbotsford Police to exactly where the burglars were and both of them were arrested.

Watch the clip below to see a demonstration of how any camera can be turned into an intelligent motion detector through the use of video analytics.

There are many options for adding video analytics to an existing camera system… and when done appropriately, basic analytics can significantly improve the level of security offered by a CCTV system.

Some of the scenarios where we have installed video analytics for our clients include:

• to detect someone walking in an area of their yard (veering off of the main path) that they are not supposed to be;
• to send an alarm if someone is standing too close to the front of a store window/front door after hours;
• to alert security guards about someone in a parkade during specific hours;
• to count the number of people coming into (and out of) a store during the day;

In the case of burglary prevention, getting an early warning about someone trespassing makes a huge difference for our response teams. Now, rather than waiting for a detector in the house to trip, we can receive an alarm signal while a potential burglar is still outside.

While our response team is enroute, our monitoring team in our Operations Centre is able to keep an eye on exactly what is happening and help coordinate both our own response as well as get the Police involved as quickly as possible if required.

We’ve got everything set-up and installed in our Kerrisdale showroom. If you have any interest in learning more about when/where CCTV may be appropriate for you, please stop by and get a demonstration.

Our next ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminar will be held on Thursday, May 27th in our Kerrisdale Showroom…

Come by anytime after 6:30pm for some wine and Benton Brothers cheese … the presentation will start promptly at 7:00pm and will last about an hour. Afterwards, we’ll lead a tour of our 24/7 Operations Centre for anyone who is interested.

This seminar always fills up… and a common comment that we get afterwards from attendees is that the presentation was ‘much more entertaining than I thought’.

A shocking but true fact that we have learned: people assume that a home security seminar will be dry, boring and/or a sales pitch.

Ours is none of those things.

Come by on the 27th and we guarantee that you will leave with some new information that you can put to immediate use to improve the security of your home. Much of what is discussed are tools/tricks that are either free or very inexpensive… you do not need to be a Provident client, or even an alarm owner, to get value from attending.

Home security does not have to be boring.

We hope to see you on the 27th to prove it!

As of today, we’ve got 30 21 15 seats left… please RSVP by clicking here

The NY Times printed an article by Paul Sullivan on Saturday called ‘Weighing the Value of a Home Alarm System‘.

In the article, Sullivan points out one of the central tenets of this blog over the past six years… that the most important reason for paying for a monitored alarm is to generate an immediate response.

Sullivan argues that given a very high false alarm rate (he suggests 80% of alarms are false – although my experience puts that figure much closer to 98%) most Police departments cannot, or will not, provide priority response.

His article should give a lot of people reason to question the ‘value’ that they are receiving from their alarm.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of alarm owners, the reality is even worse than what Sullivan describes.

Sullivan’s article is focused on the following five major points:

1. Issues with power failures;
2. Slow Police response times;
3. Insurance Discounts
4. Deterrent value is outweighed by cost of an alarm
5. Getting more than just burglary detection from an alarm

[This post addresses the first two points above... I'll post my comments on the last three issues later this week.]

Sullivan is correct in all of his criticisms about how most alarms work. However, not all companies handle these common issues in the same way.

Here are my thoughts on each of his points…

POWER FAILURES: “People may be surprised to learn that when they most need their security system to protect their house, they oftentimes cannot rely on it. Jackie Ostrander discovered that when a storm knocked out power to her home in Greenwich, Conn., for a week in March — too long for her backup battery to keep going. And it took her security company three weeks to restart her system.”

Virtually every alarm system on the market has the ability to communicate that power has been lost as well as if the back-up battery is low.

At Provident, we set-up all of our clients’ alarms to send every possible signal, not just alarms. As a result, as soon as power is interrupted, we receive a signal from each of our affected clients. Once the back-up battery starts to get low (after approximately 6-8 hours on most alarms that we’ve installed) the alarm will send us another signal.

At that point, we will attempt to contact our client to confirm that they are home and ask if they would like to replace the battery and/or implement additional security measures (such as mobile patrols or posting a guard) while the power is out. If we cannot get a hold of them, we will respond to the home and replace the back-up battery.

Most of our clients have standing instructions with us telling us what to do in the event that we cannot reach them.

The ‘power failure’ issue is really a ‘response issue’ and can be easily solved.

POLICE RESPONSE TIMES: “There are about 36 million security systems in the United States, half of them in homes. Revenue for the industry was $28.2 billion in 2009, according to the Installation Business Report, an annual security industry survey. So a lot of people apparently think their homes are going to be impervious to burglars.

But even when the systems are working properly, the police response times can be slow.

Stan Martin, executive director of the Security Industry Alarm Coalition, acknowledged as much. He said that in big cities like New York, Atlanta and Chicago, police could take 30 to 45 minutes to respond, while in smaller towns the best that could be hoped for was six to eight minutes.”

The truth is that in many cities, large and small, Police Departments are making the decision to not respond at all. For example, Police do not respond in Whistler, Salt Lake City or Fremont, California. Other cities, like Seattle, have implemented a misleadingly titled program called ‘Enhanced Call Verification‘.

Of those Police Departments that still respond, the response time is often far longer than just “30-45 minutes”. In Vancouver, the latest Patrol Deployment study showed that the average Police response time to an alarm is 2 hours and 6 minutes.

Sullivan goes on to point out that even when the Police do respond, it’s hardly a complete ‘service’…

“To combat false alarms, many police departments charge after the first or second one, he [Martin] said. In Stamford, Conn., for instance, the cost is $75. Yet these fines are often levied when a police car just drives past your house, not even pulling in the driveway, let alone walking around the property.”

The fact is that the alarm industry has gotten away with providing an incomplete service for a very long time. What other industry is able to sell a service that relies on a government agency in order to provide any value?  The alarm industry is very much a parasite on the Police … at least the traditional model of delivering alarm ‘service’ certainly is.

The most important  reason for paying for alarm monitoring is to generate an immediate response. That’s it. An alarm provides information that has an incredibly short shelf life in order to be of any value.

If the alarm signal being received is a ‘low battery’, what can the Police do about it? In many cases, the Police do not even know that the alarm they are responding to was a battery issue rather than an actual burglary signal.

The Police do not hold house keys and often do not know what exactly is ‘in alarm’… they just get told that there is an ‘alarm’.

Click below to watch a video clip from one of our home security seminars where I explain how Police response actually works… and why any incident is most likely long over before the Police even first hear of an alarm, let alone get a chance to start responding to it.

This is why at Provident, we do not make any verification calls.

When an alarm trips, we send our response teams to provide immediate response. We hold keys and we know exactly what the alarm is reporting… and what to do to correct it. If the Police are required, we call 911 from the site and report a crime in progress… a call that results in very fast Police response.

We guarantee a five minute response, but we also work to educate our clients than a security alarm is NOT a security ‘system’. An alarm is one part of your overall ‘system’ and should not be relied on as a stand-alone security tactic. As far as effective security tactics go, nothing beats Five Minute Proofing.

Without effective ‘Five Minute Proofing’ in place, an alarm is unlikely to provide any real value in minimizing loss during a burglary. The good news? Many Five Minute Proofing strategies are either free or very low cost.

Click below to hear more about Five Minute Proofing…

INSURANCE DISCOUNTS, DETERRENT VALUE and GOING BEYOND SECURITY…

This post seemed like it was going to be far too long. Definitely too long for a single post. If you’re still reading this far down the page… Thank you.

I’ll post the balance of my thoughts on the points Sullivan raised  later this week.

Just about every media outlet in North America has already reported on the burglary at one of Eli Lilly & Co.’s Connecticut warehouses this past weekend (here are the Wall Street Journal, NY Times and over 1,000 other versions). Most of the reports have focused on the fact that the crooks were able to get away with more than $75 million in prescription drugs, making it one of the biggest pharmaceutical heists in history.

The crooks gained entry to the warehouse by cutting a hole in the roof and then rappelling down into the warehouse. According to an ABC News report on the incident, once the crooks were inside they disabled the alarm and spent a couple hours loading pallets of drugs into at least one truck in the loading bay.

Here’s a video from a Hartford News station that explains what happened…

Other than the fact that that is an amazing amount of Prozac for someone to try to sell, the most interesting part of this story (for me at least) is the fact that the security failed so miserably.

Dan Gelinas is a journalist at Security Systems News and has been posting on his blog about the security angle in this story.

He’s chased down the Enfield, Connecticut Police Department and confirmed that they never received any request for dispatch from the warehouse’s alarm company.

From everything that’s been reported so far, it appears that the alarm system either did not work or, if it did, the alarm signals were ignored. Either way, whatever happened, it shouldn’t have… a properly designed security system would have detected the burglary and made a multi-hour heist impossible.

The incident is reminiscent of the 2008 heist at the UBC Museum of Anthropology where crooks got inside and stole fifteen priceless Bill Reid pieces of art, without triggering any kind of security or Police response. In that case, the Museum tried to suggest that, despite the theft, their security was working. I wrote about the incident in a couple blog posts here and here and outlined why I thought that was a crazy statement to make.

Here’s a video clip from Global TV in Vancouver about that burglary (I talk about  some of the ways that artwork, or anything, can be protected at the 2:43 mark).

In the Museum’s case, the final story ended up being that the crooks were able to circumvent all of the security technology by simply calling ahead and asking for any alarm signals to be ignored. Seriously.

There are a few security measures that should have been in place to prevent either of these incidents from happening…

Your security is in your redundancy…

Whether you are protecting your home, a corner store or a warehouse where you have $75 million dollars worth of Prozac, you cannot afford to have a single point of failure.

Your security is in your redundancy. That means that you need to have multiple lines of detection: contacts on every door and window, glassbreak sensors, motion detectors and shock sensors are required throughout.

Most importantly, an alarm should not rely on a single form of communication. If the only way that an alarm sends a signal is over the telephone lines, and that phone line gets cut (or unplugged from the inside) the alarm will not communicate.

At Provident, we use BLINK mesh radio to provide an almost instantaneous wireless signal to be sent for every alarm in our client’s homes and businesses. We use the telephone line as a back-up communication method which ensures that we receive every alarm signal twice… and if a crook cuts a phone line, it will not have any impact on the alarm’s ability to send a signal.

Protection against system tampering…

As just one example, many options exist for motion detectors that are equipped with ‘anti-masking’ technology which detects attempts to block a motion detector with spray paint, or anything. Here’s an example of one detector from Honeywell that will prevent tampering.

Similarly, options exist for almost every type of device (and the wiring) to be protected against tampering.

Ensuring that there is no single point of failure… and not relying on a single detector for any one area… will also significantly increase security.

Regular testing of the alarm… where every single device is inspected and tripped will also reduce your risk.

Protection against an inside job…

Just because a burglar has a little help from the inside (or if the burglar is already an insider) there is no need to make it any easier for them to steal your stuff.

To start with, every person who uses your alarm should have their own, unique, alarm code. If you have a housekeeper who only works on Wednesdays, or daytime staff in your office who should never need to be at work at 2:00am, their alarm codes should restrict them to the times that they are allowed to access your property.

The vast majority of alarms are capable of restricting users access by time of day. Why give out 24 hour access if it’s not required.

I’ve written a few posts on this topic, including…

Fresh Milk and Why Your Alarm Should Not Share

Your alarm should not share

Protection against forgetfulness…

The fact that an alarm user has forgotten to arm the alarm in your store or office by accident, or on purpose, does not need to result in your belongings being left unmonitored and ready for easy pick-up by crooks.

Every alarm company offers a service called ‘Supervision’ which means that if your alarm is not set by a certain time each day, a signal is sent to our Operations Centre to be followed up on.

We provide this service to many of our clients to ensure that closing staff have locked up and armed the alarm by a certain time each night. Likewise, if the alarm hasn’t been disarmed by a certain time in the morning (meaning that noone has opened the store yet) that will also create an alarm signal in our Operations Centre.

Either way, you’re protected against human error that could leave you unprotected.

I wrote about this service in a post about Lindsay Lohan’s burglary last year.

Five minute proofing…

The most effective tactic that you can use to minimize your risk of being a victim of burglary is to five-minute proof your important belongings.

In the Eli Lilly case, even one-hour proofing looks like it would’ve worked.

Five-minute proofing is the culmination of many different security tactics where the goal is to ensure that from the point at which the alarm is tripped, it would take a crook at least five minutes to get to your most precious belongings.

The first step to successful five-minute proofing is to push your alarm detection out as far as possible… ideally, you want to detect the crook while he is still on the outside, rather than waiting for him to get inside.

In the Eli Lilly case, video cameras using video analytics… or even outdoor beams installed on the roof could have offered an early warning about what was going on.

It will be interesting to hear the rest of the story about what actually happened in Connecticut as details are released.

Police in Marlton, New Jersey are looking for five suspects that broke into an Apple Store and made off with a few dozen Macbooks.

Click below to watch a news clip showing the brazen smash & grab that took just 31 seconds for the thieves to clean the store out of almost every display model.

Although the store had a Security Guard on duty, the crooks were able to smash the front glass doors and each took an ‘aisle’ in the store to grab every MacBook on display. Apparently, one of the crooks motioned to the Guard that he had a gun… forcing the Guard to back-off and not try to intervene at all.

As pointed out by the (incredibly annoying) reporter in the newsstory, the CCTV system in the store did not offer any deterrent value as the thieves simply covered their faces while they were in sight of the cameras.

Beyond the reminder that a CCTV system is not a deterrent, this smash & grab offers a few lessons:

1. You cannot make it physically impossible for someone to break in

If someone wants to try and break into your home or business, there is very little that you can do to make it physically impossible. If they want in, they’ll get in eventually. The trick is to put appropriate security measures in place that help make it easy for a potential burglar to make a decision not to bother with your place.

If you have a full-time security guard, extensive camera system or a big dog in your house, if a crook decides that he wants to try to get in anyways… he will. It’s the combination of the appropriate security measures that provide real security.

Your goal is to create enough perceived hassle for a crook that they make up their own mind that your store, or home, is not worth the effort.

2. Five-Minute Proofing is the most important security tactic

Five-Minute Proofing is the single most effective security tactic that you can implement in your home or business. Simply put, Five-Minute Proofing means that you ensure that, from the point at which the alarm is tripped, it would take a crook at least five minutes to get to what you are trying to protect.

In the case of this particular Apple Store, the store should have been equipped with glassbreak detectors near the front doors. More importantly, the glass panels themselves should have been laminated glass… or at least had security film on them, so that they wouldn’t smash so easily.

That way, when the crooks made their first attempt to smash the glass, the glassbreak detectors (if they were installed correctly) would hear the sound of the glass being attacked and trip the alarm. Alternatively, the camera system could have been set-up to trip an alarm due to someone standing at the front door for too long after-hours.

By designing the alarm to trip while the crooks are still outside, the Police could have been immediately called by the Security Guard to report what was happening and the alarm monitoring company would also be immediately able to assist. If the alarm monitoring company were monitoring the camera system, they could also relay the suspects exact descriptions, in real time, to the Police.

Beyond the front glass, there should be a second layer of physical security inside the store to help slow the crooks down. Expanding gates are often used for this purpose and are best installed several feet away from the front of the store. That way, if the crooks were able to eventually break through the glass to get in the store, they would then need to contend with getting around the expanding gates. Your security is in your redundancy.

Going a step further, each of the MacBooks could easily be locked down… not to make them impossible to steal, but ensuring that noone could simply grab a couple dozen of them in half a minute.

It’s not about making it physically impossible to get in… it’s about putting enough impediments into a potential crooks’ way that he is (or they are) unable to get to your valuables quickly.

If those three (the alarm, laminated glass and an expanding gate) Five Minute Proofing measures had been in place in this particular Apple Store, both the Security Guard and Alarm Monitoring company would have had a reasonable chance to call 911 and report a crime in progress.

The store would have had a damaged front door, but they would not have risked the safety of the security guard or had to worry about five crooks who learned how easy it is to break into their store and clean them out.

Click the video below to watch an excerpt from a recent ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminar where I explain Five Minute Proofing and give a few other examples.

Your security is in your redundancy… it’s all about having multiple lines of protection and detection in your home or business.

However, in order to get full value from additional security measures that you add to your premises (like folding bars or an exterior gate), you must ensure that you push your detection out as far as possible.

A really common mistake that we see is that a business gets broken into, then rushes out to buy a set of folding gates like the picture to the left. What they neglect to do, is connect the new folding gate to the alarm system

The value of adding an extra line of physical security is to slow a crook down… by adding a wireless alarm contact on the gate, the alarm will trip while the crook is still standing on the sidewalk. Without it, a crook can break the lock on the gate without any detection and move on to the front door behind it, undetected.

Your detection should be outside of your protection.

In most cases, adding a wireless alarm contact costs between $60 and $100… not very expensive, but very important.

Your goal should always be to five minute proof whatever it is you are trying to protect. Watch the video clip below from a recent seminar held in our showroom where I explained several ways to five minute proof your home or business.

On Wednesday morning, a Westside business learned the hard way why Police response does not work.

At about 3:45am, crooks smashed a pane of glass and forced open a set of expandable bars to steal some movies, video games and gaming consoles.

The alarm did not trip until after the bars had been forced open and the burglar(s) walked in front of a motion detector inside the store. When the alarm company received the signal, they followed typical procedures by calling the store and then the emergency contacts.

Because they were unable to get an answer from any of the emergency contacts, they were unable to dispatch the Police to request a response due to the Vancouver City By-Law which does not allow for alarm companies to request Police response until after an emergency contact has been reached.

No contact was reached… so no Police response could be requested.

As a result, the store remained wide open… accessible to the world until someone noticed the broken glass and called Police several hours later.

The store was very lucky… if the crooks who had broken in had been smart, or patient, enough to watch for any response to their initial burglary, they could have easily cleaned out the entire store, displays and all. They certainly would have had enough time to do it.

Unfortunately, incidents like this happen all of the time.

There are several things that could have been done to minimize the loss incurred during this burglary:

1. Get private response

Police response to burglar alarms simply does not work. I’ve written extensively about this issue (click here, here or here for a few examples).

By assuming that all alarms are false until proven otherwise completely eliminates any real value that an alarm can offer. Having a private and immediate response service in place would have at least ensured that someone was going to be responsible for attending to the alarm and make sure that the store would not be left wide open for hours;

2. Detect the ‘break’ not the ‘enter’

The alarm should have been configured to trip the second that the glass was broken. Instead, because the alarm system relied on an interior motion detector as the first detection point, the alarm did not trip until after the glass was broken and the bars had been disabled.

A properly installed glassbreak detector would have ensured that an alarm signal was sent while the crooks were still standing outside… which may have been enough to encourage them to change their plans. All of the effort required to break into a premises occurs while the crook is still standing OUTSIDE… the alarm must be configured to detect that. Once they are inside, they are moving quickly and it is very unlikely that response will be fast enough to catch them in the act. Detect the ‘break’ not the ‘enter’.

Burglaries like this do not need to happen.

Your security is in your redundancy. Installing bars is not good enough. Neither is an alarm. In fact, just about anything by itself isn’t going to be very effective… your security comes from building multiple levels of detection & security so that your different security measures work together to create actual security. The individual components on their own are almost never good enough. It doesn’t need to be expensive… but it does need to be well thought out. In this case, a bit of extra money spent on private response as well as one glassbreak detector would have saved a significant loss from occurring.