How Secure is Your Home? Today's Parent Magazine

In the July 2009 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 Today’s Parent and Tom McKay from the Peel Regional Police who helped them with the quiz, the answer is ‘C’ “unnecessary”.

He specifically states: “Most alarm-monitoring services can’t respond fast enough to catch a thief in the act, and crooks know it. “Burglaries last mere minutes,” notes McKay, who warns homeowners to be wary of salespeople’s claims that their company’s system is directly monitored by police. He says, “It doesn’t work that way.”

The rest 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.
You would expect much more from people the public puts so much belief in, especially by those that who have likely witnessed the devastation a burglar or home invasion can have on a family. From a security standpoint it is frustrating to see such ridiculous advice get published without any type of rebuttal or perspective from the security side. It is afterall an article on Home Securty.

Re: In Response to the Quiz: How Secure is Your Home, July 2009

The idea of suggest that an alarm is ‘unnecessary’ is irresponsible.
The reason that Tom McKay suggests security alarms are ‘unnecessary’ is that “monitoring services can’t respond fast enough…” Most alarm monitoring services respond in a matter of seconds, while most police responses are measured in minutes that are closer to the hour mark. Now this is NOT the fault of the police departments. This is a result, at least partially, of the ratio of false alarms to real alarms, police departments; they must prioritize. Many and even ‘most’ alarms are not useful is because of the way that they are sold and installed. Most home alarms are sold at a very low price point and are primarily designed to make a profit, not protect your home or business.

What Tom McKay doesn’t state is that:

Even if police response is not immediate; by adding outdoor sirens with a strobe light (yes plural sirens as in more than one!) will draw attention to your property. The last thing a burglar wants is attention. This is a HUGE deterrent when the potential thief sees that you have taken your security seriously.

Even if police response is not immediate, having quality security system will ensure that you do not unknowingly catch the home invader in the act. For example, if you pull up to your home and your siren is blaring, call the police immediately. They will make is a priority to get to your home or business.

Even if police response is not immediate, having quality security system will ensure that you know if anyone has been in your home. For example, when you get home and there have been no alarms (on a properly designed system) you do not need to worry about checking under the bed and in the closets to make sure no one is hiding there!

Even if police response is not immediate, having quality security system turned on while you are at home, especially at night will ensure that you know if anyone is breaking into your home while you are sleeping. For example, Accent Alarms installed DMP control panels are capable of being configured with a Home, Away, and Sleep modes – providing protection at the most important times; while your loved ones are sleeping!

One of the goals 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 how security can be 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 is 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 the 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;

• Combine a 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;

• 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 the 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. The goal is to try and keep your home looking just as busy when you are gone as when you’re home.

Additional information on security alarms is available at , including FAQ's, Videos, a Security Forum, and more.

Forensic Search

Forensic search
All video content analysis solutions tell you that something bad is happening right now. That's a given, and some solutions do it more reliably than others depending on the scene, and they also vary in their detection capabilities.

But one of the great strengths of the Bosch Intelligent Video Analysis (IVA), like a few others, is not just its ability to generate live alarms, but to search back through days, weeks or longer of video, hunting for that critical event - that needle in the haystack. In the simpler world of motion detection the analogy is smart motion search, also known by other names. With SMS you can highlight the area of a parking space and ask it to search for whenever motion happened there. Very simple and effective with the well known limitations of pure motion detection. The same concept is true with IVA, but it's just taken to a new level. With Forensic Search you might want to search through 6 months of video and ask it 'Tell me all the times someone parked in front of this gate' in order to find out if it is a common occurrence. Or to find out when the graffiti was artistically applied 'When in the past week have people been loitering in front of this wall for more than 2 minutes'.

Equally important to searching after-the-fact, it is also a critical set up tool. Set up the camera and record it for a few hours, and use your friends to reluctantly simulate the kinds of stunts you want to detect and ignore, but don't set up any rules just yet. Then using forensic search define the rules and test them against that recording. It will instantly tell you which events caused alarms and which ones were ignored. Tweak the rules until you get the performance you expect. The great thing is you don't have to go back time after time to re-enact those scenes, because they're all already recorded and analyzed. Consider this a life saving tip for saving time during IVA setup. And you will keep your friends for longer.
As a final note, some people understandably can't get their heads around 'metadata'. Video content analysis information, in the form of metadata, is generated and stored with the video. The recorded metadata, comprising simple text strings describing specific image details, is much smaller and easier to search through than the recorded video. The metadata includes many things including an objects size, aspect ratio, speed, location and direction and color. The kinds of things that help you to draw a new trip wire and ask 'Has anything, over the size of a small bunny rabbit, crossed this line in the past month?'

For background reading, a brief but good step by step article is Campus Safety and Security's 8 Factors to Consider When Deploying Video Analytics by Craig Chambers. It raises many great points, as valid now as it was back then
http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Articles/?ArticleID=124

Steve Hunt, one of the industry's premier movers and shakers, at least on my Richter scale, paints a complete primer in his podcast at http://www.securitydreamer.com/2008/09/this-video-anal.html.

Another good set of warnings are presented as objectively as always by John Honovich of ipvideomarket.info fame at http://ipvideomarket.info/report/top_3_problems_limiting_the_use_and_growth_of_video_analytics.

Originally posted by Dr. Bob from the Bosch Website

DMP Reason #4 Easy Installation

Reason #4
Reduce Installation Time - Built-in Survey LED in Every DMP Wireless Device

One person can immediately verify the operation of each transmitter in seconds without disturbing customers. One quick blink at each transmitter or a diagnostic message at the keypad let you know everything is good before leaving the site.

One more reason to choose DMP!

Visit www.AccentAlarms.com to learn more.

Intrusion and Access Control - 1 Panel

With DMP Entre you get total control of intrusion and access management for the cost of a burglar alarm system. Customers can manager a single system or an enterprise wide system in one easy-to-use graphical user interface. Add and delete multiple users in multiple panels with just one click. Access Control functions seamlessly with all of the alarm capabilities and communications of the security system.

Point and Click control over every aspect of your system makes Entre easy to learn and simple to operate. There's never a better way to look at your security.

One more reason to choose DMP.

Sony Showcased First HD PTZ Camera

LAS VEGAS, April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- ISC West Booth #7086 -- Sony is showcasing
the industry's first high-definition pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) IP network security
cameras at the 2009 ISC West conference as part of the new SNC-RH series
camera lineup.  The cameras have the ability to pan 360 degrees while
capturing and streaming HD video using H.264 compression technology at up to
30 frames per second.

The SNC-RH series is the flagship of Sony's IP-based network security cameras.
The newest models include the SNC-RH124N for indoor use and SNC-RH164N for
outdoor use.  The cameras are the first in their class capable of transmitting
HD images using H.264 video compression technology, which enables the
transmission and storage of digital video using less bandwidth than previous
video compression solutions.

"The new PTZ HD cameras have advanced features that were designed to help the
industry transition from standard- to high-definition operations," said Miguel
Lazatin, senior marketing manager in Sony Electronics' Security Group.  "The
ability to transmit high-definition video using advanced video compression
signals, combined with these cameras' features, gives users added flexibility
to deploy HD cameras into a growing number of industries and applications."

The new line-up also includes Sony's SNC-RS series of standard-definition PTZ
cameras, including the SNC-RS44N, SNC-RS46N and SNC-RS86N models.

The new SNC-RH124 PTZ IP network security camera is also among the first to
offer users IEEE p802.3 compliant High Power over Ethernet (hPoE) operation.
As a result, the new cameras, including their PTZ features, can be operated
using a single Ethernet cable without requiring additional power supply.

For users that need to capture moving images in low-light conditions, the new
SNC-RH124N and SNC-RH164N PTZ cameras are equipped with XDNR(TM) (dynamic
noise reduction) technology.  This feature virtually eliminates image blur
during low-light video capture, a common problem with many competitive camera
models.

The cameras also feature visibility enhancing technology, which was developed
to improve performance in challenging lighting conditions, such as
high-contrast situations with harsh backlit environments where foreground and
background brightnesses vary greatly.

Each of the new cameras features advanced DEPA(TM) (Distributed Enhanced
Processing Architecture), which supports intelligent operation; are capable of
dual streaming images in HD using H.264 or MPEG4 compression technology; and
feature an easy-to-use speed-dome design that can be rapidly assembled and
deployed.

In addition to the SNC-RH and SNC-RS line up of cameras, Sony will also be
showing a line of seven new network video encoders that can be used to convert
signals from analog to IP.  The new devices range from the basic one-channel
SNT-EX101 model to the 12 blade, 48-channel rack-mount SNTA-RS3U model.

The entire line of encoders is capable of dual streaming video at 30 frames
per second in JPEG/H.264, JPEG/MPEG4 or MPEG4/H.264 configurations.  The
encoders also provide users with advanced features such as intelligent motion
detection, the ability to detect video loss, compatibility with PTZ cameras,
and are compatible with many other manufacturers such as American Dynamics,
Pelco and Bosch cameras.

Additional products to be displayed at Sony's booth include the recently
introduced line of 1.3 Megapixel cameras and hybrid network surveillance video
recorders.  Those products include the SNC-DM110 megapixel Normal mini-dome,
SNC-CM120 megapixel CS mount Day/Night, and the vandal-resistant SNC-DM160.

The complete line of PTZ cameras includes:

HD Models:
  --  SNC-RH124, Indoor Version
  --  SNC-RH164, Outdoor Version

SD Models:
  --  SNC-RS44N, Indoor Version, 18X Optical Zoom
  --  SNC-RS46, Indoor Version, 36X Optical Zoom
  --  SNC-RS84N, Outdoor Version, 18X Optical Zoom
  --  SNC-RS86N, Outdoor Version, 36X Optical Zoom

The new cameras are scheduled to be available this fall, with suggested list
pricing to be announced.  To learn more about Sony's IP-based network security
products, visit Sony online at www.sony.com/security.




SOURCE  Sony Electronics

More Protection for your TV or Your Daughter?

Most home alarms sytems uisng only interior and perimeter protection provide more security for your flat screen TV when you are away than when your daughter is sleeping in her bedroom. Does that make sense?

Let us show you a system (DMP) that easily arms interior detectors while sleeping, would you consider buying anything else?

One more reason to choose DMP.

New Bosch Flexidome

FlexiDome Cameras with 9-22 mm Varifocal Lens Solve a Wider Range of Surveillance Challenges Than Ever Before

The Bosch FlexiDome camera series now offers a 9-22mm varifocal lens option on many types of cameras—from indoor color general purpose cameras to outdoor day/night cameras that are vandal resistant.

The lens is IR-corrected to keep FlexiDome Day/Night cameras in focus at all times. It also features enhanced sensitivity and faster reaction to light changes.

Available in both analog and FlexiDome IP models, the new lens provides:

• Identification of a person positioned up to 65 feet away
  
• Wide area coverage up to 31.2° horizontal and 22.8° vertical
  
• Telephoto coverage up to 12.8° horizontal and 9.6° vertical
  

Of course, the FlexiDome line delivers:

• 15-bit Dinion DSP technology and XF-Dynamic for exceptional video clarity
  
• 540 TVL for sharper, more detailed images for easier identification
  
• Auto Black to reduce the effects of fog or glare
  
• Day/Night coverage for excellent performance and infrared sensitivity around-the-clock
  
• Programmable backlight compensation to optimize the area of interest for clear viewing of entrances and exits