Provident was featured in a Global Newshour story (click on either the link or image to watch) following up on the Vancouver Sun article from Tuesday.

The story talks about the increase in business that has been prompted by the recent gang shootings in the city. As I mentioned, people who call to set up a sales appointment with us mention that they have been meaning to call us for a few months and it was seeing one of our trucks, lawn signs, seeing us in the media or talking to a friend that day that prompted them to finally make the call. These shootings have produced the same effect.

There really isn’t much that anyone can do to prevent or deter motivated people who are trying to kill someone. We do not sell bullet proof vest or armoured vehicles. In fact, we won’t provide alarm monitoring, response or any services to people whom we know to be criminals…. which has resulted in our turning down more than a few opportunities over the years.

We don’t pretend to offer security services that will help prevent these types of incidents from happening.

Unfortunately, I think that the only useful advice for people who are worried about becoming an innocent victim caught in the middle of one of these shootings is to be cognizant of your surroundings. If you see anything or anyone who looks suspicious, call 911.

However, property crime is something that we ARE very effective at dealing with. If these shootings have got you thinking about your security in general… like how to reduce your risk of a burglary, upgrading your alarm system, considering whether or not a CCTV system is right for you, or other issues like that… we can do that. Please get in touch with us.

The Vancouver Courier published a story on Friday regarding the recent safe thefts in Kerrisdale. You can read the article by clicking here, or on the Courier logo to the left.

Now that safes have gotten significantly cheaper, and are available not only through locksmiths but at Costco, London Drugs and other retailers, I expect that we will start to see many more safe thefts (assuming people have not had them locked down).

As pointed out in both Monday’s post, and the article, unless your safe is professionally installed… which means either bolted into, or mounted inside, poured concrete… you are increasing your risk of losing your valuable possessions.

In the event that you are looking for a safe that will double as a piece of jewelery itself, and are willing to part with $35,000 for a small one, check out Stockinger‘s selection of luxury safes. Either way though, whether you are spending $139.99 or more than $30K, if the safe is not bolted down and connected to the alarm system, don’t put anything of value in it.

Here is a clip from last night’s episode of Realty TV on CityTV. My interview was split up into three clips that played during the show and the editing job that we have done to put them together is a little choppy… but the point still gets across.

Provident will be featured on Realty Television Thursday night at 11:00pm as well as on Saturday morning at 9:30am on Channel 13 CityTV.

I was interviewed for the spot a few weeks ago touring a home talking about how to minimize the likelihood of a residential burglary.

A few weeks ago, Ian Watt interviewed me for a segment on his weekly The Spot show on the Real Estate Channel. Ian is a Realtor with Century 21 and specializes in the Downtown condo market.

During the segment, I talk about Provident in general as well as mention a very exciting new service that we are launching called BLINK mesh radio monitoring. I will be posting much more information about this service in the coming weeks… BLINK is exclusive to Provident and has been in the works for more than a year.

BLINK solves the issue of cellular back-ups being rendered obsolete later this year, as well as eliminates the requirement for clients to maintain an analog telephone line. Additionally, signal transmission is more than 10x faster than either a telephone or cellular connection… meaning that we can receive an alarm signal within 2-4 seconds… rather than between 40-60 seconds now. More to come.

Here is a link to the full hour of the Bill Good Show this morning where I was on a panel with Tom Stamatakis, President of the Vancouver Police Union, Dr. Darryl Plecas who is the RCMP Research Chair in Crime Reduction at The University College of the Fraser Valley as well as City Councillor Kim Capri. The topic was the Vancouver Police’s Patrol Deployment Study and their request to Vancouver City Council for an additional 65 Officers.

Tonight, we were featured in a CBC news story regarding "bump-keys". (The link is to the entire newshour but you can skip your media player to 6:32 for the story).

Several months ago, a subscriber to this blog sent me a link to a video posted on YouTube from a Dutch television station that showed how to create a bump-key that is capable of opening just about any pin tumbler lock. That video has since been removed from YouTube, but dozens of others are now posted including this one which was featured on the CBC story.

There is a lot of information available on the Internet about how bump-keys work… one of the better resources I found to understand the issue is this white-paper produced by TOOOL (The Open Organization of Lockpickers) which is a Netherlands based lock-picking club… who run the Dutch Open Lockpick Championships (seriously). There are also many places to purchase pre-cut bump-keys to save the hassle of actually cutting your own.

The knowledge of how to ‘bump’ a lock has been around for decades, and although bump-keys have received some increased press over the past couple of years, they are not new.   

In my experience, having attended thousands of burglaries during 11 years with Provident and before that with the RCMP, I cannot think of a single incident without forced entry. As I described in a post about the typical burglary… (a post which has generated dozens of emails from  all over the world telling me that their burglary in Dallas, Bangalore, Moscow, Los Angeles and everywhere in between, happened exactly as I described) entry is most often gained by kicking in the front or back door, using a small screwdriver or crowbar to pry the door just enough to allow a strong kick to break the door frame.

As I mentioned in the CBC story, most residential burglars are not very industrious people. They are looking for the simplest way to get into, and out of, a home. Most are motivated by getting their hands on cash, and things that can be easily turned into cash quickly, rather than simply for the challenge of breaking in. When all that it takes to get into most homes is a strong kick, why bother trying to beat the lock… either by picking it or bumping it?

Your security is in your redundancy… to the extent that you are relying exclusively on your locks to keep you safe, and have not implemented any other security measures, bumpkeys should be enough to push you to take a harder look at what you are relying on.

Provided that you have your burglar alarm armed (and that it has been properly designed and installed), your alarm is going to trip as soon as the door opens, whether the door is being kicked in or the lock is being bumped. As a result, bumpkeys do not really pose a greater threat to you if you have taken other basic security precautions… most importantly having a monitored burglar alarm with immediate response.

You cannot make it physically impossible to break into your home, but you can ensure that you minimize your risk of loss. In my experience, the most important security initiative that can be taken is to ‘five-minute proof‘ your most precious belongings. (Of course, if you do not live in Vancouver and/or are not a Provident client, you need to learn what the response time to your alarm is likely to be by the Police and/or your security company… and then protect your belongings to that level.)

I was just interviewed by CBC News for a segment airing tonight at 6:00pm on Channel 3. The story is about bump-keys and the potential security risk that they pose.

Not to ruin the story in advance, but I suggested that noone should be losing any sleep over this vulnerability in most locks… but it is certainly good to be aware of what the issue is and that it is possible, with a few minutes training, to open just about any lock without causing any damage.

It sounds like it will be an interesting segment. If possible, I will post a link to the actual story tomorrow.

There were two stories published in the Vancouver Sun this morning that included Provident.

The first, What’s under the tree can attract a very un-merry break-in, talks about how Christmas time is a particularly bad time for break-ins.

The second, Security firm does more than monitor alarm, talks about our remote access management services and how we can lock or unlock doors for clients from our Operations Centre in Kerrisdale (as well as provide a long list of other remote services). We have clients who utilize this service in Seattle, Toronto, Calgary, Victoria, Kelowna and many other places in between. One of our Abbotsford based clients, Dwayne Stewart from Pacific Rim Services was quoted in the story talking about how we remotely unlock doors for his staff to get access to equipment in the middle of the night.

I mentioned the need for this type of service in apartment buildings in a post several months ago after a Vancouver Police Officer wrote a column in the Province complaining about how many security systems in apartment buildings make it very hard for the Police and other emergency responders to get inside quickly.

Security Products & Technology News (SP&T) just published a story about Provident being named one of the 25 best places to work in B.C.

This is the fourth time that we have been featured in a story in SP&T News (here is a link to the most recent three) , which is the trade magazine for the Canadian security industry. Provident’s inclusion in the Top 25 list has also been featured in the American industry magazine, Security Sales & Integration.

We certainly are looking forward to being able to continue to attract the best people to come and work at Provident. Over the past year, our Installation team has doubled in size and we are actively looking for qualified candidates to join our team. (Just about all of our technicians are graduates of the BCIT Alarm Technician Program).

In addition, both our Operations Centre team and Guard teams have also grown substantially. In fact, we are looking for good people to help us grow in almost every area… if you know someone who might be a good fit, please send them our way.