As a property manager you have a lot of people who depend on the safety and security of the apartment building you oversee.
Every day you have to deal with a number of challenges, including building maintenance, equipment inspection, handling residential complaints, hiring and maintaining qualified staff, and handling residents’ complaints. Read more →
Is your burglar alarm system programmed with a communication timer test?
Just ask officials at the Siskiyou County Courthouse in California, who were shocked to discover that the failure of the security system protecting $3 million in gold resulted in a clean getaway for the thieves who simply smashed a hole in the glass case protecting the historical artifacts and grabbed everything they could.
The gold nuggets had been a theft target once before in 1979, when the silent alarm functioned as intended and the would-be marauders were apprehended roughly a block away from the courthouse with the illicit wares in their possession. This time, however, the vibration alarm that was meant to protect the irreplaceable gold nuggets – some of which date back to the town’s founding – did not respond at all. A town spokesperson stated that the system had been properly armed, and that the county was working with its security provider to get to the bottom of the glitch.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of the sad story surrounding the Siskiyou gold is a footnote at the bottom of the article that mentions an annual security alarm test schedule. According to the Courthouse, the last test occurred in August of 2011, nearly seven months before the February theft.
There is an important lesson that business and property owners can learn from the tragic tale of the Siskiyou theft, and that is that it’s not enough to rely on a single alarm system test every 12 months. So much can happen within a year’s time, especially in a heavily-trafficked space such as a courthouse or a retail space, that it really becomes necessary to perform an alarm system test at least once per quarter, if not once per month.
American Alarm programs a timer test with its business security systems that can send communications weekly or daily, depending on the type of signals being monitored. If our central station operators do not receive a signal, we contact the owner immediately to determine the cause of the missed communication, and find a solution to the issue.
It costs nothing to make sure that your alarm system is functioning up to spec – what’s the price tag of not knowing? In the case of Siskiyou County, the figure would seem to be $3 million.
If you’ve had a recent life-changing event like getting married, having a new baby, buying a new home, or maybe starting a home-based business, your life and your priorities have changed – and so have your home security needs.
When it comes to security and electronically protecting your family from harm, crime is not the only thing you need to worry about. Fire and even carbon monoxide poisoning are also concerns. If you have aging parents who may have moved into your home, they too, have special security needs. You need to think of home security as a continuum, and work with an alarm monitoring company that understands that your needs change as your life changes.
Many homeowners wait to think about buying an alarm system after they’ve been the victim of crime. Wouldn’t it be better to have that piece of mind before an incident occurs? That’s why security professionals agree that home security should be a proactive and not a reactive process.
Here are four very good reasons to consider installing a home security system, no matter what stage of life you’re in: Read more →
There is a weakness in many “all-in-one” (fire/burglar) home alarm systems. Some major distributors and alarm monitoring companies have built in dialer delays that prevent signals from being sent to the central station for up to four minutes after the alarm is tripped in the home. Four minutes may not sound like a lot of time, but in four minutes you can drive four miles, you can listen to a song, heat up your lunch, or dance the Four Minute Waltz. Read more →
