Tip 7: Lighting
More and more burglaries take place during daylight hours, but lights are still very important in your fight against crime. Indoor lights suggest that the home is lived in and occupied, while outdoor lights deprive a thief of privacy.
Outside lighting should cover all your doorways and entrances: these are the most likely areas to be attacked, so they are also the most critical areas to protect. If possible, you should also bathe as much of the rest of your property in light as you can. If you live on a park or wooded area, this side of the home should be extremely well lit.
Installation tips
Make sure to place your lights ten feet off the ground, where possible, to avoid a tampering thief and to provide better illumination.
Use motion-sensitive spotlights to light up your driveway or the path beside your home. While burglars are likely to know that there is not someone there who just turned on the light, the sudden illumination is quite often enough to make you or your neighbour take notice of it and look outside, which a burglar doesn’t want.
Use light timers, which are inexpensive, so that when you’re not home, interior lights turn on and turn off with the same regularity that they do when your home is occupied. Place light timers all over your home in different rooms, so that it is not always the hall light or the bedroom light that goes on. Also, try hooking up a radio to one of them to provide a little extra noise.
Security system design and consulting
In order to design the most effective security system, we first determine your goals and needs. Then we present a customized set of options, costs and specific strategies for a supported, well maintained system. And after sign-off, we do extensive testing and training.
Paladin works in thorough ways. We provide turnkey solutions, take a holistic approach, work in partnership with you throughout, and even train your staff to make sure every part of the security systems strategy is effectively implemented.
Customized security officers
We know from our experience that providing the best security is about having the right people for the specific job and environment. At Paladin, we don’t believe a guard is a guard, but practice strategic staffing, where we determine the specific mix of skills and attributes needed for the each position.
We invest considerable time and resources into recruiting right. Superior people want to work with a superior company — one that cares about quality, treats their people well and offers personal growth and advancement — so we are fortunate to receive many applications. We then use our stringent hiring to processes filter out the most ideal candidates, which is approximately one successful new hire out of twenty applications.
Training is what differentiates us, and it’s why we lead the industry. Once we have the right candidates on board, we start by conducting extensive pre-employment training and certification for each new staff member, which surpasses all legislative and regulatory requirements and standards across the country. Each Paladin security officer then undergoes pre-assignment training and site training unique to each position and its respective industry. In total, we provide 35 different courses through our University of Paladin, including ongoing training.
To ensure our people continue to perform above expectations, we have a multi-faceted field management model and provide various employee support programs.
GPS-enabled mobile patrols
We have the largest mobile emergency response fleet in the industry, with trained, licensed and bonded emergency response officers. Our mobile patrols can keep any type of building and premises safe. Our personnel can perform fixed-time and or random checks to look for unusual activities or problems, which can keep you and your property secure; in one patrol of high-rise under construction, we discovered a leaking pipe, which saved the client hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Access control systems
We provide access and intrusion detection systems that offer the best protection. Only Paladin offers complete, end-to-end service: we design, implement, install and service our systems, which means more efficiency, security and convenience for you.
Card systems are more cost effective than traditional locking systems. Most businesses recognize the costs of re-keying, for example, but with a card, a client can simply cancel an individual user. In addition, our access control systems can provide detailed information for workforce time management.
We can maintain your access system remotely, including adding and deleting users, controlling lock and unlock times, backing-up the database and performing system diagnostics. This eliminates the need for on-site computer staff to maintain your system.
24/7 security system monitoring and response
Paladin has the most state-of-the-art technology and advanced central monitoring stations in the country, with multiple back up systems in place. Unlike other security companies that contract out to a third party, we operate our own alarm and remote video monitoring stations across Canada. That means you benefit from a faster response to all of your alarm signals. Our stations meet and exceed the highest industry standards through our ULC AA listing and our CSAA 5 Diamond certification.
Temperature control monitoring
We install and monitor the most effective temperature control systems for protection against freezing pipes or over-heated server rooms.