First let’s examine what we want to keep secure. Is it a house or a business? For simplicity let start with a house, you would need to make sure that all the entrances and exits to the house were secure. There are many ways to achieve this but the easiest would be mechanical locks. With locks, everyone who you would allow access would need to have a key. If the key gets lost or stolen however you are out a significant amount of money because you would need to change all the locks in the house.
There are other methods to lock the doors to a house. One of the most interesting are biometric devices. These access control devices use a person’s body as an identifier to access a door. It could be a finger print or an eye scan. We are dealing with a home security system though so I think the eye scan might be out of reach as far as cost to the average home owner however the finger print version would not be. The other alternative is with an access card and a card reader.
For home use, this method doesn’t make much sense but you could issue key cards to your family or friends and have the ability to deactivate or activate people using access control software. It would make sense however if you had certain rooms that were off limits to children. The advantage about this system is that if you lost a key card another could be made without having to change all the locks in the house and the lost key card could be deactivated, again this makes more sense for business security.
Video surveillance seems to be better suited for business but there has been a surprising amount of videos lately that show video surveillance in homes catching criminals in the act. Home owners might be willing to employ video surveillance especially if it can help catch the individuals responsible for theft of their personal items. One other possibility for home video surveillance is to keep a close eye on your children or even a baby sitter while you are out of the house. Video surveillance may seem extreme but I would not be opposed to using it in my household if the price was right and price may be the deciding factor for many home owners.
Access control and video surveillance are the two main features to at least try and keep your home safe but what about your business? Now of course you would employ one of options I have mentioned above but there are other methods that businesses use that homes may not.
Perimeter detection is a tool that businesses use to do exactly what the term suggests, guard the area around your business. Cameras are set up that can track heat signatures of people and animals and then notify when somebody or something gets too close. There are also communication devices such as intercoms and PA broadcast systems that deal with the safety and security of your business. There are even new methods of deterrent systems that can bathe a suspected perpetrator in red light before he has even decided to commit a crime. New and amazing new technology is developed every day that can help a home or a business improve its security. So what is the ultimate security system?
Aside for wearing bullet proof armored plating and sitting inside an inpenetrable bubble, there is no perfect security system. There are only levels of security that you feel comfortable with and even with the most sophisticated tools available you are not completely secure, but if it makes you feel secure then the system has done its job.