From shoplifting, to credit card fraud, to employee theft, small business owners have it tougher than ever when it comes to protecting their company from loss. According to the Ponemon Institute, a nationally recognized security statistics company, over 70% of businesses “express concern about information and/or physical security of company assets.”

 As a small business owner in an uncertain economy, now is the right time to take security and protection seriously. Lack of security can actually be the number one reason that a growing company fails. According to Ponemon, over 20% of consumers actually terminated a relationship with a company after being notified of a security violation.

 In a small business, this type of breach cannot be tolerated. How do you protect your assets and go about making sure that your company is not just another statistic?

A commercial security alarm system is a must for any business with a physical store. If you want to trust that your business is safe at all times, you need to protect it well. Installing a system to protect against crimes like vandalism,  burglary, and other common crimes is going to give you more peace of mind than you might expect. When it comes to finding the right alarm system, you have to think about what you need and which features are most important. Here are some great features to look for when evaluating commercial security alarm systems.

When most people think about a surveillance system, they think about cameras placed in a business that are capturing a crime from a criminal stranger.  We can see a lone cashier in a convenience store being robbed by a masked gunman.  That is certainly a great use of cameras in a business, but it is not the only use. Internal theft represents a huge loss of money for business owners, more in fact than external theft.  I could write a blog just about that, but I want to write about loss of assets due to employee mismanagement. Not every loss in a business comes from some sinister plot to steal money or products. Sometimes simple mistakes or carelessness cause a company to lose money.

According to the FBI, the number of violent crimes reported by law enforcement for the first six months of 2012 increased 1.9 percent over figures from the same period in 2011.

Home Security Store’s latest infographic, entitled “Odds of Burglary in America” indicates that the South has more burglaries than other regions, with Houston being the city with the very highest burglary rate, followed by Chicago and Dallas, says infographic artist Justin Marini.The infographic was created by home security ecommerce retailer Home Security Store and features information provided by the FBI and the National Burglar and
Fire Alarm Association.Infographics, or information graphics, are graphic visualizations of information, data, or knowledge, adds Marini.  “The graphs can be very useful in understanding complex information.  The information we present is not too complex, but does serve as an eye opener for some homeowners who may think they are safer than they really are.”

The average home insurance premium in the U.S. is $800 per year.  How would you like to lower some of those fees?  Doing so is easy.  Here’s how –

Are you thinking about purchasing a surveillance system, but aren’t yet convinced that a security camera is what you need? Well, if you’re on the fence, allow us to point out a few recent cases where surveillance cameras have caught criminals in the act.

The world has changed a lot in the past few years, thanks in no
small part to the digital revolution, including great advances in the Internet,
networking, security camera systems, DVR viewer surveillance software, and personal computers. Possibly nothing has changed more than the business world, which has countless new tools at its disposal to not only help the company make money, but keep its merchandise, and employees safer. Through the advent of network enabled digital video recorders (DVRs), DVR viewer software, and high speed internet connections, it is now possible for a business to monitor their stores and warehouses
remotely, from any part of the world, as long as they have a high speed internet connection.