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Ask Slashdot: Inexpensive SOHO Crime Deterrence and Monitoring?
First time accepted submitter trellz writes "My sister and brother-in-law are self employed, and run a small business with a storefront. It was broken into about a year ago, and since then they have reinforced physical security; bars on the doors and windows, better locks, etc. Unfortunately, their store was broken into and vandalized again last week, in spite of the added security measures. Being technically savvy, I'm trying to come up with inexpensive ways to add deterrence, monitoring, and alerting to their business. They run an extremely lean lifestyle and profit margin, so the solution needs to be almost free. They do have an internet connection at the store, so motion detection, web cameras, Arduino devices, and the like are certainly an option. Ideally I would like a rock-solid alerting method. Something like an email or text to a laptop at home, or a dedicated prepaid phone, but without the pitfalls of such a solution (i.e. random wrong numbers, solicitors, email spam, etc). I'd also prefer not to poke holes in their firewall at the shop if at all possible. I was considering an email with some sort of long code or hash in the body, and then could white list that on the receiving end to key off of. The goal is to never have a false alarm based on the transmission/reception method." What advice, beyond ZoneMinder?
What about getting a dog? It's both a deterrent and an alarm.
They run an extremely lean lifestyle and profit margin, so the solution needs to be almost free.
Doing nothing has a cost too... possibly more break-ins = more lost profit. There is a potentially high risk cost of doing nothing; depending on what it is, they might be able to budget a lot of money, and the net cost could be zero: assuming the break ins are actually causing damage and hurting their business revenue.
The idea that you run a business, and you are not willing to spend any money on security is absolutely ridiculous. You should be willing to spend an appropriate amount of money to manage the risk.
The most important mitigation is probably to have insurance, but again... the premium may increase, the more breakins.
This may be a matter that a security consulting firm should be hired to look at.
Hidden cameras with a DVR may be useful to help catch the perps.... however, there is a problem: this is only useful, if responders become aware of the breakin and get there, before the thief can locate the DVR associated with the cameras and destroy it.
Visible cameras, may be used as a deterrent; however, they are subject to vandalism.
One of the best deterrents which should not be overlooked is a professionally Monitored security alarm system with External sounders, Internal motion detectors, Door sensors, Glass break detectors, perimeter coverage, and an alarm loop and cellular backup to a central monitoring station, that will dispatch authorities in the event of an alarm.
Buy business insurance, do what the insurance adjuster wants you to do, and don't do anything more.
If you don't have or can't afford business insurance, then you should question whether your business is viable or not, especially if a poorly timed robbery can put you under.
This does nothing. But it completely stops break-ins and it's cheap.
https://spygear4u.com/ds_proddetail.asp?prod=GS-LS-131
Watch the videos you can find of it around. It's very scary. Does nothing, of course, but it's VERY scary. And that will keep your family's store safe.
I'm seeing a lot of partial solutions here. Both in what has been done, and in what is being proposed. The first thing you should be doing though has been mentioned, and that's talk with your insurance adjuster. At the very least you can find out what your liabilities are for various security measures, and possibly what measures will reduce your insurance rates.
Start by looking at what a thief is going to see as they look at how to enter the property. You may find the TV series from a few years back "it takes a thief" (or something like that) helpful in looking at the entire place for security problems. The doors and windows may be barred, but is it possible to gain access through the floor, or ceiling? Even a good barred door may be a problem if it's sheltered in such a way that you can't see if someone is working on the lock.
Part of that should also be looking at what you can do to improve deterrence. Signs, visible (if non-functional) alarm panels, even a steadily blinking light next to a sign labeled 'Alarm System' can be a deterrent.
And finally look for ways to monitor the approaches to the property both front and back, and if the building is stand alone, all around the building. You may want to use PIR along with IR Lighting to capture movement around the building.
If you are presuming that someone will break in after you've identified (and hopefully fixed) the issues from outside, then you're to the detect and defend internal options. High resolution cameras, covering the access points. Motion detection, door and window open sensors, glass break detectors, etc. These are intended to generate alerts and set up a means to capture what information you can about the thief. Tip, mark the door frame on either side of likely entrances with contrasting tape to form a crude (half foot or 20 cm increment) tape measure to give you a quick estimate of how tall someone passing by the entrance is.
Obviously you will need to decide for yourself how critical it is to secure different parts of your store. High value gem dealers usually place their entire stock in a vault of some sort overnight. If you know what the reason is behind the break-ins in the area (paying for drugs being common) you may be able to protect high value items by making it easier to steel a few low value items that you are less concerned about loosing.
Understand what the thief is working with. Unless you've been cased for a professional theft, in which case you're insurance carrier may have other suggestions for you, Most thefts are a snatch and grab variety, the thief is looking to get in, get something and get out. Be gone before the cops show up. If you know the cops will be there within 20 min, (talk with other businesses in the area that have experienced break-ins to find out if that estimate is even in the balpark) then you know how hard you have to make it for a thief to get at the valuables.
Also set policies (and follow them) for how to deal with elements of the store that are critical for operating. Assume that a thief can get the cash register, all cash within the store, and possibly your computers in the store. Does someone have a spare cash register, and operating cash for the day that they can bring in at the start of the day if you need to get going while making repairs? Is there sufficient spare stock in an off-site storage to get up and running the next business day, or are you going to be waiting a week for your suppliers to restock? Is the customer information on your systems at work in a secure system? Do you have off site backups of your inventory and books? Have you a policy of depositing all cash over and above what you absolutely have to have for daily operations on a nightly basis? Do you have multiple known locations where you can make those deposits so that if construction makes your usual after hours depository unavailable you can still make your deposit. Have you tested your off site backup solution to confirm that if your systems up and left, or a vandal cam in and drove a pick-ax
You never know...
Right, could be insider threat.
Good point. There's so much here that isn't made clear. Some questions to answer before deciding what to do:
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Often your insurance will demand certain CERTIFIED minimum requirements with your insurance premium going down the more you meet their requirements.
And those requirements don't have to make sense or be best practice but they are the difference between your insurance company paying out and not paying out.
If requirements made sense, we would LONG since have had HD camera's recording to HD's rather then very very very poor camera's recording to low quality tape. But your own 4k mug shot and tricorder scan of the perps DNA and entire social history will see your insurance claim thrown out with a scornful laugh while a certified wobbly 320x200 etcha sketch will get you fully re-imbursed.
So: First check with your insurance company.
Next: Crime prevention is about denying criminals what they want:
1 Fast
2 Easy
3 Cheap
4 Low risk
5 Money
So do stop criminals make their crime be
1 Slow
2 Hard
3 Expensive
4 High risk
5 Non paying.
Your shop needs a door and to be inviting it needs to be airy and this is done by making it out of glass. But a glass door is easily shattered. A wooden door with two large glass panes separated by a wood bar in the middle is ALMOST as inviting but now the burglar either needs to remove the door, open it or climb in through ONE of the smashed panels. This is slower. He will still get in but be able to steal less in the same amount of time. This makes it less profitable.
Shutter I mean one of those rollup "fences" that drop out ofthe celing, no idea what their english name is.
One thing you could do for instance is leave your display window open but install a shutter inside the store itself as an additional barrier to overcome. Barely visible during the day, at night an extra barrier. Many people place them infront of doors but this just requires you to lift the shutter, then bust in the doors that tend to open inwards.
Place an electrically lowered shutter BEHIND inwards opening doors, how do you open that one without a key? You can't push the doors in because the shutter is blocking that and you can't lift the shutter because the doors are in the way. Remember, theft prevention is like preventing being eaten by a lion, you don't need to be able to outrun the lion, you just need to outrun your neighbor.
Hard is similar to slow of course in that you make the burglars work just that little bit harder. Just one more lock, just one more barrier to overcome. One thing we as consumers hate is those plastic wraps around products but they have a simple reason. They are very large meaning it is hard to conceal for shop lifters or at least conceal as many. And they are hard to open to make it hard to open them and take their contents. We know this works because well, we all bitch about how hard they are to open. Most of the large plastic containers are pure theft prevention and contain a fully serviciable selling/display package inside for shops that don't need to fear shoplifters.
Do you NEED to store all your most valuable products in handy to carry containers right near the entrance to the warehouse? Or could you place your most expensive products on the highest shelf in the furthest corners? And lock up the ladder? And add some barbed wire to the shelves for those trying to climb it?
Think of shoe stores, if they are smart, they one have either the left or right shoe on display. Putting both the right and left shoe in the same size outside is asking for it but how many shoe thieves are interested in only left side shoes? I don't know if this was purely accidental but I did once notice that all the shoe shops in one area all had only the left shoes on display.
Expensive might be a little less clear but while you might think that a prepared thief can cut through any chain in any case you might as well get the cheapest available, the simple fact is that not all locks/chains etc are the same. And the better ones require mo
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
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i bought a really nice bike years ago when i started university and it was stolen (locked up in an open public place within the university grounds)... talking to campus security revealed that it was commonplace and that the solution was to use a cheap shitty looking bike because they aren't targeted
in other words... make your store appear less of a target; if you have massive steel bars on the windows and security cameras everywhere, crims will think you are protecting something of value. i dunno what the store sells, but you may want to look at what measures are used by other similar stores in the area.
there are a bunch of possible reasons why your store could have been targeted:
- what sort of neighborhood is it in? (maybe shift to somewhere with lower crime)
- do you have any enemies? (think outside the box here a bit, such as does your wife have nasty spats on facebook? women can be as vindictive as men)
- how do you get on with your competitors? (you're not competing with the mafia are you?)
- are the police offering any advice? if so, maybe consider following it
at the end of the day, you need to analyze how it is affecting your business overall. i'm guessing you're not in the security business so having bars on the windows and alarms and cameras probably is costing a lot and not contributing to increased sales. the decisions you make should be sound business decisions, as well as consideration of your personal or family situation if you think there is any risk (what happens if someone comes in while you are in the store?). for the business, add it to your threats column and see how it all stacks up. if you are spending more on security to the point where you're not making enough to pay your bills then the viability of your business in on the line. continuing an unviable business out of spite for the criminals is stupid obviously (that's how government's think, not small busininesses).
trying to shape the problem to suit a solution that an IT specialist can help with is putting the cart before the horse; more security may not be the right solution.
there isn't really enough info provided to give much more of a story but its a fairly common problem with shop fronts so there should be a lot of folks out there with ideas.
In what way? Mythbusters use the scientific method to test claims. They measure, experiment, collect data on a variety of scenarios - controlling and testing different variables on each pass - and report on their findings.
Some of their findings have been challenged by members of the public, and repeat experiments have been conducted - some confirming the initial assessment and some forcing a revision. Their experiments and their results are available to anyone and are testable, repeatable, and refutable all the same, with further experiments refining the hypotheses under test.
That's called "science".
I'm afraid you've been poorly educated on the subject if you don't think so.
Dogs work well. But, housing and caring for dogs in a downtown business district can create a lot of headaches, too. Not to mention, that well trained security dogs are expensive, and poorly trained dogs are a liability. Be prepared to spend not less than twelve hours per week with a pair of dogs - time that many businessmen don't have.
In short, I wouldn't recommend dogs to anyone who didn't
A: think of it themselves
B: actually likes dogs (preferably loves dogs)
C: have a close by exercise yard
D: have plenty of time to work with the dogs
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
My friend, you just suggested a shotgun trap, which is illegal. Like premeditated-homicide illegal. Sure, the criminals were breaking into the store, but the difference between a trap pulling the trigger and a human is all it takes for the store owner to go to jail.