Verified Security Blog

come to 2013!  Since we have entered a new year, it is a good time to evaluate your plans for maintaining your security systems.  As with any electronic systems, security systems need care and attention to stay in good working order.  Here are some questions you should answer as you think about your systems:

n most people think of security system monitoring, they think of monitoring of door and window sensors and motion detectors for intrusion detection.  But, monitoring can be used for so much more.

, the National Retail Federation reported that 9 billion dollars are lost to return fraud every year by retailers.  What is return fraud?  According to a recent article in the online version of USA Today, return fraud is defined as “a crime where people exchange stolen goods for cash, use counterfeit receipts or bring back items that have already been worn or used.”

many of you who use access control systems to manage the traffic coming and going to your facility, you may think of your system as a group of card readers.  When cardholders arrive at the office, they present their cards to the readers and are granted access to your building.

re is a new technology that is slowly making its way into the world of traditional door access control.  The technology is called Near Field Communication or NFC.  Some newer smartphones are built with NFC chips inside of them which will allow those phones to control devices just by holding the phone near a NFC reader.

I discussed in this previous blog post, there are easier ways to manage your card access control system.  In that previous post, I discussed an option for managing your access control system with just a web browser instead of having to use a Windows-based software package for the management of your system.

title="AJC Article about Video Surveillance in Atlanta" href="http://www.ajc.com/news/news/atlanta-council-votes-to-spend/nSdbc/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">As reported this week by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the City Council for the City of Atlanta voted to spend $2.25 million to expand its video surveillance presence in the city.  City of Atlanta officials are pointing to the existing video surveillance infrastructure as one reason that crime in some categories has been reduced.

you have an access control system for your facility that allows you to use access cards or keyfobs to open locked doors?  If so, you probably manage that system with a server that has software that holds the system configurations and the list of cardholders.

eo surveillance cameras are widely deployed in many homes and businesses.  In fact, this article from Popular Mechanics magazine states that “there are an estimated 30 million surveillance cameras now deployed in the United States shooting 4 billion hours of footage a week.”  But, we often encounter users and owners of video cameras who are not able to view their video whenever they want from wherever they want which makes that video much less useful.