Simple Holiday Security Tips to Keep Your Home and Business Safe
The very last thing we want over our much-anticipated year-end break is suffering a loss at the hands of opportunistic criminals. How can we avoid this holiday hell and simply enjoy our time away without fretting about coming home to find that our home is emptier than our post-holiday wallet? We’d like to offer a few holiday security tips to ensure a happy and stress-free break.
Get Big Brother Online
Centurion Systems bring up a good point on holiday security; “Use your cell phone for remote monitoring and control. This is the closest thing to being two places at once. If you’re really worried about leaving your home unattended for extended periods of time, having a GSM module installed may be just what the doctor ordered.
“GSM devices turn your cell phone into a long distance remote control and monitoring device that can be used to switch on your alarm, electric fence or pool pump (as well as a host of other electrical devices) via a missed call or SMS, and receive SMS notifications when, for example, your alarm has been activated or power back home has been cut.”
What about holiday security for your business?
Myertal Tactical Security offers some helpful tips on their website, with some rather frightening statistics; “The general attacks on the business place have gone up over the years, reaching an all-time high in 2017. The number of business break-ins is an average of 57 break-ins per day.”
Huge Connect’s Managed Wide Area Networks (WAN) offer excellent connectivity options for businesses, which means you can easily and securely monitor your premises wherever you are in the world via CCTV.
“Huge Connect provides a managed wide area network solution consisting of multiple access mediums all interconnected into a single platform. Our Managed Data Networks provide secure, reliable and managed data communication solutions, leveraging our world-class network.”
By staying connected to your home or business premises via your phone, you can also turn lights on during the evening to make sure that your home doesn’t look dark and empty – the perfect target for unsolicited “Christmas shoppers.”
Be Wise Online
The UK Telegraph recently posted an article discussing how your social media activities could invalidate your insurance. It says, “Insurers are increasingly rejecting claims made by customers whose houses have been burgled while on holiday if they have shared the fact that they are away from home on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
“The Financial Ombudsman and local police forces have both issued warnings about posting on social media while away, alerting would-be burglars to the fact that your house is empty, but every summer some customers have their claims rejected by insurers.”
So, think twice before you hit send. Perhaps wait until you’re home before posting that picture of you in your bikini.
While you may not think that your Facebook friends are likely to break into your house, it’s worth remembering that you don’t necessarily know their friends who may be less than upstanding citizens.
Keep Your Cards Close to Your Chest
Criminals are getting smarter and bolder all the time, so we need to keep our guard up. Getting home to find our bank account empty would be tragic, but there are many ways we can stay ahead of the game and keep our cards safe.
Discovery has a number of very useful tips for keeping ahead of card fraud and include:
- Let your card provider know when you’re about to leave the country
- Be careful which ATM you use – inspect the front of the machine, and if it looks damaged, don’t use it.
- Tear up any credit card or ATM receipts before you throw them away
- If you shop online, only place orders with your card on secure websites. Check the website’s URL – the address displayed should begin with ‘https’, not just ‘http’
- Subscribe to SMS and email notification services that notify you of activity on your account.
Banking.org says to “Ensure your card never leaves your sight. Most restaurants and shops have portable card swipe machines so there should be no reason for your card to leave your presence. If the person needs to use a different machine always accompany that person.”
This is because card skimming is a quick and easy way to clone your bank card using a small, unobtrusive device, and it only takes a few seconds of inattention from the card-holder.
Contactless cards – while incredibly quick and easy to use – give up their information a little too easily. In fact, anyone with an RFID reading device can access your card details if they simply stand close enough to you. Many travellers are using RFID blocking sleeves to carry their bank cards to stop this from happening.
Having highlighted some of the issues around holiday security, we want to make sure that you can use this knowledge to keep you and your loved ones safe this Christmas. The Huge team are standing by to assist you with secure and reliable connectivity solutions so that you can have a well-deserved and worry-free break.
