Many buildings have burglar alarms, but how many of them have a reliable firm monitoring them? If you are thinking about having a burglar alarm fitted to your home or business premises, have you ever considered having some sort of monitoring service?
Let’s take the burglar alarm on its own for a moment. This can be an excellent deterrent to would-be burglars, particularly the opportunist. The alarm you choose needs to be effective and work correctly if it’s to be of any use at all. But when it is triggered, what happens next? It makes lots of noise, it may have flashy lights, but if there’s nobody monitoring it, what’s the point? I can tell you from experience that an unmonitored alarm is one of the most annoying and disruptive sounds ever. I used to live near a street that comprised of small businesses with flats and houses above and around those businesses. One particular organisation had a very sensitive alarm on their building and it would go off, usually on the Friday or Saturday evening of a bank holiday, and nobody would turn up to check the premises or switch the blasted thing off. This alarm would be going off intermittently, every 10 minutes for about 5 minutes at a time. It was a complete waste of time; the building could have been stripped of all valuables and the manager wouldn’t know anything about it until they opened up on the next working day.
So, whilst this burglar alarm may have been a deterrent, it wouldn’t necessarily stop the building being broken into. If the criminals know that there will be no response or responder, they will take their chances.
Having a reliable security firm monitoring the alarm means that either the police will be called, or the firm will send someone out to check. An immediate response is crucial if criminal activity is suspected as it could be prevented and the intruders caught.
False alarms are a complete nuisance, as my experience has shown, however, having a monitoring service can prevent annoyance among neighbours and complacency from passersby. Dealing with false alarms is so important as part of the prevention of burglary as it will show anyone who may be watching the building that someone will attend if the alarm goes off.
The use of security cameras in conjunction with the alarm will be an even greater deterrent. This is particularly the case where the security firm have access to the cameras. The operatives can see whether or not there is a viable threat to the property or if it is a false alarm and take the appropriate action. This saves a lot of time and will reduce stress for the property owner.
As you can see, having a burglar alarm is a useful tool and will provide a basic level of protection, by combining it with cameras and having a dedicated security firm monitoring the building increases the security. Peace of mind is priceless and knowing that your building is being watched by security professionals is definitely worth it.
All of this is why many people turn to a company like Wye Security Solutions (see https://wyesecuritysolutions.co.uk/mobile-patrol/ for details) as their mobile patrols will respond to an alarm activation within minutes, something that many potential burglars know about, which means when they see the sign ‘These Premises are Protected by….) they move on and choose an easier target. So do bear this in mind, as a burglar alarm by itself, while being of some use, is really only a part of any security set up.
