Provident was featured in a Vancouver Sun story about Google’s announcement today that they are launching their own operating system to compete with Windows.

I was quoted in the article because Provident switched earlier this year from Microsoft Outlook (& Microsoft Office in general) to Google Apps.

Here’s an excerpt from the article… (or you can read the entire story here)

… Vancouver’s Provident Security is one. Founder and CEO Mike Jagger said dropping Microsoft Office in favour of Google apps is saving the company some $60,000 this year in hardware, software and maintenance costs. It is also streamlining applications making them much easier for company employees to use and offering added benefits such ease in uploading videos that can go on a company-only secure site for training and other information purposes.

“We were using Office before and we were using Word, Excel – the big one was the Exchange server and Outlook,” said Jagger. “The original impetus was to move off Outlook.

“Once we started seeing the benefits of having things web-based we started migrating everything over.

“It has had a huge impact. It is so much simpler to administer. “

Jagger said along with the software and server costs, there was significant investment in employee time keeping the old system working and ironing out employees’ problems with it.

“We have really skilled programmers and they were getting harassed to do really basic network stuff, we were wasting time, wasting talent and spending money on things that were just silly,” he said. “This is much better.”…

click here to read the full story

I’ll be speaking at the next Vancouver Construction Industry Meetup, being held on July 15th at Toby’s Pub & Grill which is at 2733 Commercial Drive (between 11th & 12th).

I’ll be presenting about burglary prevention, five-minute proofing as well as talk about integrating security considerations into the design process.

It will be different from our regular ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminars that we host every month in our showroom in that this talk will be geared more towards contractors, designers, integrators and homeowners about to undertake a renovation project.

If you’d like to attend, click here to RSVP… everyone is welcome.

In this month’s Today’s Parent magazine, a ‘quiz’ asks How Secure is Your Home?

Unfortunately, the article/quiz offers some suspect advice… specifically, the third question in the quiz asks:

3. A home security system with an alarm is:

a. Essential;

b. nice to have, but only if you can afford it; or

c. unnecessary

According to them, and Cst. Tom McKay from the Peel Regional Police who helped them with the quiz, the answer is ‘C’ “unnecessary”. The balance of the quiz includes a lot of the typical, and overly simplistic ‘security tips’ such as cutting your hedges and picking up newspapers that seem to make their way into every home security tips list.

It’s frustrating to see such ridiculous advice get published. I wrote a comment in response to the article which I’ve re-posted here below…

Re: Quiz: How Secure is Your Home, June 2009

To suggest that an alarm is ‘unnecessary’ is irresponsible.

While alarms are no longer the deterrent to burglars that they once were, an alarm can be a very important part of a home or business’s overall security ‘system’… the problem arises when people believe that a simple alarm is, in and of itself, a security system.

The reason that most alarms are not useful is because of the way that they are sold and installed. For example, most home alarms are sold at a very low price point and rely on motion detectors inside… ensuring that by the time the alarm actually trips, the burglary is almost over.

Couple that with the fact that very few alarms in Canada utilize private response service and instead ‘rely’ on Police response that averages over two hours in most cities (in Vancouver, it’s 2 hours and 6 minutes) a strong case can be made to say that most alarms are not providing any real security.

However, that is a judgement on those particular (and unfortunately, the majority) alarms… not alarms as an entire category.

The most important reason for having a monitored alarm system is to generate an immediate response. However, contrary to what your article states, there are companies who respond fast enough to a burglary.

Our firm, Provident Security guarantees a five minute response time to our clients alarms.

The goal for a properly designed alarm is to detect someone while they are still trying to break-in rather than after they are already inside. Coupling an alarm with several easy to implement physical security tactics is where security is maximized.

The most important of those security tactics is ‘five-minute-proofing’. ‘Five-minute-proofing’ means that, from the point at which your alarm trips, it would take a crook at least 5 minutes to get to whatever it is that you are trying to protect. It’s a combination of early detection by your alarm and slowing a crook down so that he cannot find (or remove) whatever it is that you are trying to protect.

In your article, the first tip suggests using a hockey stick to prevent a sliding glass door from being opened. The mistake most people make with this tip is that they make the stick the same size as the rail that it will be laying in. Instead, apply a ‘five-minute-proofing’ strategy by ensuring that the stick is cut so that it is about two inches shorter than the door. This way, when a crook tries to pry the door, it will open enough for the alarm to trip, while still keeping him outside.

‘Five-minute-proofing’ can be applied to every single item in your home. It’s simply a matter of identifying which items you need to protect and applying the same strategy.

Some other simple ‘five-minute-proofing’ strategies include:

• In almost every residential burglary, thieves will head straight to the master bedroom and pull open the bedside table drawers, then rifle through the closet. Do not leave your family jewelry there. Either put the jewelry you do not wear into a safety deposit box at the bank or put it in another room in your home;
• Consider putting a lock on your master bedroom door. It’s almost always the first place crooks go… a lock, even a really cheap one, will slow them down;
• Use a bicycle chain to keep your LCD or plasma screen TV connected to it’s wall bracket;
• couple window film with a properly installed glassbreak detector (monitored by your alarm)… that way, when the crook tries to smash the glass and can’t on the first attempt, the alarm will trip while he’s still standing outside;
• Screw a washer that is a little wider than your sliding glass door near the top of the door so that it cannot be lifted out of its track (but again, leave enough distance between the top of the door and the track so that the door will move enough to trip the alarm before hitting the washer).
• If you want to get a safe, ensure that it gets professionally installed and bolted into concrete. An 800lb safe is much easier to move than most people think… if it’s not bolted down, it’s not ‘five-minute-proofed’.

Contrary to the advice in your article, I recommend against canceling your newspaper, milk or other deliveries. The fewer people that know that you are away, the better. Ask a trusted friend or neighbour to pick up any deliveries for you in your absence. (or, if you’re a Provident client, book a HomeWatch) The goal is to try and keep your home looking just as busy when you are gone as when you’re home.

We’ll be livestreaming tonight’s Preventing Burglary seminar again at www.communitysecuritytv.com

The presentation will start at 7:00pm PST

There is no need to register or login to watch the seminar, but if you would like to be able to use the chat feature and ask any questions, you will need to have a UStream.tv username & password which you can get by going to www.ustream.tv and clicking on the ’signup’ link at the top of the page

The next ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminar will be held on Wednesday, June 24th at 6:45pm in our Kerrisdale Showroom.

Click here to get all of the details and to RSVP.

Each of our past seminars has been completely sold out… as of today, we still have 12 seats left.

We’ll have a wine & cheese reception before hand and then start promptly at 7:00pm. Afterwards, we’ll lead a tour through our 24/7 Operations Centre for anyone interested in seeing what happens behind the scenes when an alarm trips.

If you are still looking for something fun to take your kids to this afternoon, come out to the Chips Not Dead Yet Memorial Mile. Even if you don’t want to run in the race yourself, there will be huge street party with a lot of fun events, games & music.

We’re proud to be supporting the event as a sponsor and, in addition to providing security for the event, we will have our giant inflatable slide set-up at 3:00pm in the West end of the Safeway parking lot at West 10th & Tolmie Street

The races start at 3:00pm (you can check out the official schedule here).

West 10th Avenue will be closed down to traffic between Sasamat and Tolmie Streets between 3:00pm and 11:00pm… in addition to the race, the giant Provident Security slide, lots of kids games and entertainment, and the main stage (with performances by Current Swell at 3:15pm, Armchair Cynics at 4:00pm, Run GMC at 7:30pm and Daniel Wesley at 9:00pm) there will also be a huge tented beer garden.

We hope to see you there.

On a somewhat related note, whenever we have the slide up, people always ask about how long it takes to put up, take down, etc. So, in case you were also dying to know how the slide gets put up, click on the clip below to watch a training video we made for our slide crew…

A few weeks ago, Vancouver Realtor Ian Watt asked me to contribute a ‘guest’ video blog post for his blog … click below to watch a clip where I explain why many access control systems in condos may not be providing much security.

Community Security TV will go live on May 20th at 7:00pm…

As each of our past seminars has quickly sold out, we’ll be trying something new on the 20th… we’ll be streaming the entire seminar live on the internet. If you’d like to watch from home, or wherever you are, click here to watch. Not only will you be able to watch and listen to the entire seminar, you can also ask questions using the ‘chat room’ feature.

There is no need to register or login to watch the seminar, but if you would like to be able to use the chat feature and ask any questions, you will need to have a UStream.tv username & password which you can get by going to www.ustream.tv and clicking on the ‘signup’ link at the top of the page

Either in person, or on the internet, we hope that you can attend on May 20th.

Click here if you would like to attend in person… we’ve still got a few seats left.

The next ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminar will be held on Wednesday, May 20th at 6:45pm in our Kerrisdale Showroom.

Click here to get all of the details and to RSVP.

Each of our past seminars has been completely sold out… so for the first time, we’re going to live stream the entire seminar. We’re working through some of the testing with the livestream and I’ll post RSVP details for that for anyone who is interested in learning about how to protect their home or business from burglary, but can’t physically make it to our showroom.

For those that can make it personally, we’ll have a wine & cheese reception before hand and then start promptly at 7:00pm. Afterwards, we’ll lead a tour through our 24/7 Operations Centre for anyone interested in seeing what happens behind the scenes when an alarm trips.

Today, CBC reported about a disturbing sexual assault that happened when a man entered a home in Coquitlam around 3:30am and assaulted a 12-year-old girl who was asleep in her bed.

In this case, the man was able to gain entry to the home through an unlocked door. Luckily, the girl was able to fight the intruder off and scream for help.

This story reminded me of an incident in Kitsilano in 2006 where a very similar crime was committed.

While these types of incidents are not regular occurrences… they do raise the issue of how to best secure your home while you and your family are in it… especially while you are sleeping.

Beyond the obvious advice of ensuring that all of your doors and windows are locked, here are a few other things to consider:

Arm your alarm in STAY mode when you go to bed

With most alarms, certainly with each one that we install, there are several ‘modes’ that you can arm it in.

AWAY mode tells the alarm that you would like to arm every single device in your home, whereas STAY mode tells it to arm only specific zones. While the default programming is to make STAY mode arm all perimeter devices (typically all of the door and window contacts), we can program STAY mode to be anything you would like.

For example, we can program STAY mode to arm all of the perimeter devices as well as glassbreak sensors and motion detectors in the basement and certain areas of the home.

This allows you to arm your alarm, but walk around in your home without setting it off.

Your alarm system can only offer value if it is armed.

Ensure that you have portable telephones easily accessible

In the event of any type of emergency, it’s incredibly important to be able to call for help as quickly as possible.

While having a cellular phone is good, having portable telephones that use your landline (that are fully charged) offer the added benefit of providing Caller ID information to the 911 call centre so that even if you are unable to speak, they know what address to respond to.

Your security is in your redundancy… in the event that your phone lines are cut, a cellular phone is an important back-up measure.

Consider keeping your cellular phone charger in your bedroom (rather than downstairs in the kitchen) so that your phone is always charged and sitting on your nightstand.

Remember that home safety is much more than burglary detection

While these types of incidents cause a lot of fear, the reality is that the frequency of incidents like these are very rare.

A much more likely scenario is accidentally leaving something on the stove or something else that causes a fire to start. How old are your smoke detectors? Do you have monitored smoke detectors outside of each bedroom in your house?