At Northeast Security Solutions, we specialize in creating security for every property and every situation. This involves creating tailor-made security systems for each home we visit. Additionally, it also involves addressing seasonal security issues as well. As we officially enter “spooky season,” we must take into account the security threats this time of the year offers up. While some Halloween “tricks” prove mostly harmless, some of them cross the line into real issues — or even crimes. In this post, we aim to provide some valuable Halloween security tips for your home this year.
First, we’ll explain what makes this season a security danger in the first place. Having this knowledge in place will provide a solid “base” to set up the rest of the information in this post. Then, we’ll show you how to address these potential dangers using a variety of approaches. For starters, we’ll review some tips to make your home as unappealing to pranksters and criminals as possible. From there, we’ll discuss some security equipment to add Halloween security. This section will include a couple different ways for you to put “eyes” around your home at all times. Now, let’s dive in with a look at why we aim to beef up security when we approach this section of the calendar.
Halloween Security Dangers
Over the Halloween season, we need to keep a couple things in mind from a security standpoint. First, you need to watch out for those committing pranks and other sorts of small mischief. While occasionally somewhat innocent, seasonal pranks can still leave you with inconvenient cleanup and small damage control. Following the security tips found in this post can help you encourage pranksters to pull their nonsense elsewhere.
Hiring a security company can help you boost your security when you need it most, such as over the Halloween season.
More importantly, trick-or-treating can open your home up to the eyes of many strangers. Teenagers and even friends of parents with young ones can easily use trick-or-treating as a way to scope out the neighborhood for homes with the latest televisions and video game systems. Even quick glances at and into your home from the doorstep can encourage unwanted return visits. Furthermore, Halloween provides a perfect cover for those canvassing neighborhoods for empty homes to return to later.
Keeping Your Home and Yard Visible Even if You Celebrate Halloween Elsewhere
You may remember this summer’s post sharing Security Tips for Travelers. In that post, we discussed the importance of “maintaining appearances” for your home’s exterior in your absence. After all, a home that is clearly vacant makes a much more likely target for burglary. On Halloween night, the same concept holds true. Many homeowners keep their lights on to indicate a good stop for trick-or-treaters. Conversely, turning the lights off acts as a signal to let families know the house is empty. While it may result in a few trick-or-treating families ringing your doorbell for naught, keeping the exterior of your home well-lit can make it less obvious that your home is empty on Halloween, and thus make you a less obvious target for a prankster, vandal, or burglar.
Additionally, keeping exterior lights on also allows passersby to see your doors and yard. On a night when a dark home clearly indicates an empty home, houses without lighting can turn into low-hanging fruit for troublemakers. We recommend taking steps to keep your entire yard visible on Halloween, even if you celebrate elsewhere. Now, let’s take a look at one more security tip for the Halloween season.
Security Equipment that Adds Halloween Security
We offer many security solutions that come in especially handy during this prank and crime-filled season. We’ll begin this section of Halloween security tips by looking at adding equipment that adds security to your home’s entry points. From there, we will look at a couple options for adding exterior surveillance cameras. The presence of this technology can certainly help discourage tricksters from targeting your home. If something does happen, you can use the video captured to put together what happened, and when. Let’s begin with a focus on adding doorbell cameras to watch some of your home’s most vulnerable areas.
Doorbell Cameras
Over the past few years, doorbell cameras have gotten very popular very quickly. Our preferred doorbell camera comes packed with customizable security settings to add security to your own doors. If you have a security system monitored through our cellular dialer powered by Alarm.com, we can add a doorbell that interacts with your alarm quite easily. The Alarm.com cellular dialer already gives users the ability to arm and disarm their security systems remotely with a smartphone or tablet. Adding an Alarm.com doorbell camera also provides a video notification if someone rings the doorbell. At this point, you can engage in a conversation with the visitor. This comes in especially handy if the doorbell rings when you don’t expect visitors, or if the doorbell rings later at night than usual on Halloween and you want to view your late trick-or-treaters before opening the door.
Alarm.com doorbell cameras allow you to see and communicate with visitors to your home.
Additionally, doorbell cameras allow you to view them remotely at any time. If your doorbell cameras sense motion, they will even capture and store a video for your later viewing. Furthermore, you can create a notification that alerts you immediately when these cameras sense motion. The ability to track activity around your doors make these an extremely popular way for homeowners to add Halloween security. Let’s look at another option to create video security to your home’s exterior.
Exterior Home Surveillance Cameras
As we mentioned in this section’s introduction, installing home surveillance cameras can act as a deterrent from pranksters and criminals alike. Many of our customers install exterior cameras to watch over their driveway, doorways, sheds and garages, and any other areas of interest. Many customers install Alarm.com smart cameras around their home. This provides them with the ability to set up the same types of alerts afforded by the Alarm.com doorbell camera. They also provide a relatively low price point compared with hardwired camera systems. However, hardwired surveillance systems also offer benefits of their own. Let’s take a closer look at this type of system to provide a comparison.
We often install high-quality, hardwired surveillance systems for homeowners. We install these cameras with a recorder that records video 24 hours a day. While we can connect these surveillance systems to your home network, they still operate independently from it. This means that glitches in your network will not affect a camera’s ability to capture video. For this reason, customers with the need for the most consistent surveillance available often go this route.
Additionally, the cameras included on this system tend to have a higher resolution than their Wifi-based counterparts. This allows users to get a closer view of what happens in front of their cameras. Of course, the additional recording equipment, installation of camera wiring, and higher-end cameras also make this option the more expensive of the two.
Putting Our Halloween Security Tips for Your Home to Work for You
We hope that these Halloween security tips help you boost your own security during this season. Additionally, we also encourage you to contact us with any questions this may raise for you. We will happily answer any and all of your security-related inquiries. Furthermore, we also invite you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We offer complimentary security audits and equipment quotes to both new and existing customers alike. While on site, we can address both seasonal and year-round security security concerns for your entire property, both inside and out. Together, we can create a complete security plan to keep your home and family as safe as possible during this Halloween season and beyond!