How to Protect Your Home from Theft

You come back from a long weekend and as soon as you walk into your home, you know it has been ransacked and burglarized. Besides the loss of property, the worst thing is you just feel violated.

Or you walk into the office Monday morning and most of the office equipment is just gone and the front door is smashed in.

In either case, you know you have to do something, but what?

There are some very obvious solutions to home and business security:

• Alarm systems, both monitored and unmonitored • Large dogs • At home and in business safes • Secure all windows and doors with burglar proof locks • Install a peephole in the front and back doors • Use timers to turn lights off and on • Use motion detectors for outside lights

But perhaps one of the most overlooked ways to protect your home or business from burglary are cameras, both visible and hidden. Like alarm systems, cameras act as both a deterrent and as a means to record perpetrators and help capture them.

Cameras can also be used as super-peepholes. You can set them up to capture video of your front entrance or even 360 degrees around your house or business. By putting them in plain sight along with signs indicating you have an alarm system too, you have a powerful means to prevent a crime before it happens. You can set up your outside view camera to start recording when you motion detector turns on the lights. The options are wide and varied.

Hidden cameras offer an additional way to catch miscreants in the act. You can set up cameras to watch on your TV from any room in the house.

Wireless security and spy cameras are very flexible. You can watch your home or business from any Internet capable monitor. You can record video for a fairly long period of time with some home surveillance systems. In some cases you can record for up to ten hours with one 9 volt battery.

No matter where you home or business is and no matter the challenge of securing your home or business you'll find a spy or surveillance camera application that will work for you. Combine that resource with one of the other burglary prevention methods and you should feel secure.