Often, good business security is merely an afterthought, something you may only give attention to after a break-in has occurred. You may then rush to secure your business, but it’s best to take your time in selecting the right kind of business security for your operation.

Businesses without alarms are 4 times more likely to be burglarized than business protected with forms of business security. Business security increases the safety of your employees and customers as well as your stock. If a criminal does manage to get in, business security helps keep the losses at a minimum. Here are some different ideas you can consider for your own business security plans.

Business Security Tip #1: Protect the Premises

The most common form of business security is the alarm system. Both wired and wireless systems are available. These systems can be easily installed and can be supervised by professionals at a monitoring center. Business security alarms protect all points of entry – doors and windows. There are also business security alarms that detect motion inside the room. If a window is broken, a door opened, or someone creeps across the room, the alarm will emit a shrill wail and will also alert security officials.

Business Security Tip #2: Protect Your Valuables

If you have important documents or items at your office, it is best to keep them in a fireproof safe. Regular safes only protect your valuables from burglars. Fire safes do double duty: they protect your valuables from foe and fire. Our fire safes have either bank vault quality or digital electronic locks that bolt tightly shut. Knuckled hinge pins prevent a criminal from simply removing the door. All fire safes can be easily bolted right to the floor, so even if a criminal wanted to carry a possibly 200-pound safe out the door, they couldn’t.

Business Security Tip #3: Protect Your Employees
There are two tools you can use to arm yourself and your employees in the event of an emergency. A panic button simplifies personal and business security down to a direct line. If an emergency arises, but the alarm is not triggered by normal means, hit the panic button to set off the alarm and call for help.

If an intruder tries to attack an employee, mace or pepper spray will temporarily disarm the criminal, giving the victim time to escape and get help. Arm your employees with mace or pepper spray to protect them on late nights and walks to the parking lot, where many criminals attack. Your employees will appreciate your concern for their personal safety beyond just business security.

Business Security Tip #4: Keep Intruders Away

Law enforcement officials recommend a motion sensor light as a strong crime deterrent. Criminals will shy away from well-lit businesses, because they prefer the cover of darkness to do their dirty work. Put a spotlight on them, either with an energy-saving motion sensor light or a flood light that stays on all the time.

There are also common sense ways to secure the outside of your business. Begin building your business security system with basic business security. There are simple do-it-yourself steps you can take to create an inexpensive business security system before you even add any special technological components.

Install exterior lights and include either a timer or a motion detector

Secure all exterior doors and windows with well-built, sturdy locks

Trim back trees and shrubs around windows and doors

These DIY business security tasks are easy and fast projects, yet they offer you and your employees paramount security.

Business Security Tip #5: Monitor Your Store

Security cameras can be your eyes and ears all around you. Video monitoring systems, whether CCTV systems or spy cameras, bullet cameras or dome cameras, offer 24-hour supervision for your business. Security cameras can keep a shopper from becoming a shoplifter, and will scare away burglars. Beyond preventive business security, if an intruder does get inside, the cameras will help officials identify and capture the criminal and bring him or her to justice.

Business Security Tip #6: Know When Customers Arrive

A very basic form of business security is the wireless door chime. It will alert you whenever a customer enters the store, so you can always be certain someone is there to supervise the store while customers are present. This not only protects your store but improves your customer service.

Business security technology these days can make your business super-secure, saving you money and giving you peace of mind. Protect yourself, your employees, your customers, and your property with a business security system customized to your security needs.

Where you can find out more about Adel Biometric Security Fingerprint Door Locks and
articles on Biometric Security

The definition of disaster, according to dictionary.com is “an occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe.” There is little doubt that Hurricane Katrina did just that and more. And although people were able to escape, many were not and that made me think about what kind of preparation could be done for a “catastrophe” so horrific.

It’s easy to get caught up in everyday life and forget how quickly our existence can be turned upside down. How do we prepare for a misfortune of this magnitude? Do we become a country forever on guard, naively waiting to meet the next irremediable calamity? Scurrying around with cases of bottled water and canned soup in our closets; there is little doubt that our society preys on the fear factor. It’s in more than 50 % of the advertisements we see. So what are we to do?

Perhaps we can all chew on this food for thought. During a disaster you rarely think about getting out with anything but the shirt on your back, and it is not until the smoke clears that you realize you need much more. It’s not just the material things, but information, and documents that prove to be most valuable; they prove who you are and who you were. When was the last time you updated your resume and executed a review of your work history? It’s difficult to think about performing “job search 101″ when you have not showered in three days.

I have spent many years writing how to books and for the first time I realized that I don’t even take my own advice and complete the record books as I instruct others to do, or maintain pertinent information on my own family.

Recently my daughter suggested that perhaps we all need computer chips placed under our skin so we can easily be identified along with our personal, medical and work histories. I really think that is carrying things a bit far, but how do you start over when you have nothing? Did any one see the woman on the news who wrote her name on her arm so she could be identified if found dead?

How do you relocate and find employment for over half a million people? According to the Center for Law and Social Policy press release dated Wednesday, February 2, 2005, cuts to Adult Education proposed by President Bush would have devastating effects on the 51 million American out-of-school youth, and adults who lack a high school diploma or GED, and 29 million in need of English language services.

What does this have to do with Hurricane Katrina? Three states that would be hardest hit by the Adult Education budget cuts are Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi; states that faced especially high demands for adult education services. What kind of employment will the victims of Katrina be searching for and what type of training will the federal government offer those with limited education?

The federal government must learn that investing in the education of its citizens is the only way to assure that when disasters occur, and they will, families living in the ravaged area will have a fighting chance to start over with a shimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. People don’t want hand-outs; they want jobs, good paying jobs that will allow them to provide for their families.

In the coming weeks it will be interesting to see how the government handles the relocation of the hurricane victims. I was an Independent Living Program Supervisor about twenty years ago; working to reintroduce wayward youth back into society and it took me more than a year and some times two, to assist a client in creating a stable life journey. I know this is not the same, but the process of reestablishing a life is not going to be easy for Katrina victims and America better get ready. According to recent polls the poor and middle class in America already stand on rocky soil, live unstable lives and trust a purportedly insensitive inept government. Can it get any worse?

If you are interested in downloading the full analysis of the proposed adult education cuts, visit: http://www.clasp.org ; and for more information on how to prepare for natural disasters visit: http://www.ready.gov/natural_disasters.html.

DETRA D. DAVIS is a writer with more than 20 years experience in business-to-business, business-to-consumer copywriting. She creates instructional, operational and how to manuals for business and industry, currently working with J. Davis & Associates Publishing as an Editor. Visit her website at http://www.supportingourchildren.com
Email: detra_davis@supportingourchildren.com

In the aftermath of 9-11, and the growing problem of workplace violence, the demand and need for employee background checks and security checks are now greater than ever. Employers are turning to investigative companies in greater numbers to run employee background checks on new job applicants and existing employees, including positions where security may not have previously been given much consideration in the “pre 9-11″ era. Many employers are now requiring security clearances for many non-defense related “high-tech” positions including computer programming. Employee background checks are required by Federal or State law for certain occupations such as jobs working with children, law enforcement, defense contractors, and any Federal employment.

Security clearances

Often, in employee background checks, especially where a security clearance is required, employers may run criminal records checks on the spouse of a job applicant as well and decide not to hire somebody based on their spouse’s criminal record, even if the applicant has a squeaky clean record. In a traditional employee background check, only the applicant or employee is investigated while for a security clearance, the spouse and other family members are investigated as well. This holds true not just for top secret job positions within the US Military, or defense contractors, but now many “high-tech” civilian jobs such as programming as well. Unfortunately in some situations, whom one is married to can determine their employability. A dishonorable discharge from the US Military will automatically eliminate any chances of getting a security clearance.

In an employee background check, some things cannot be reported: Civil lawsuits, judgments older than 7 years, paid tax liens and collections paid after 7 years, bankruptcies older than 10 years. All over information except for criminal convictions older than 7 years. While employers are prohibited from requiring applicants to provide copies of their criminal records, they can obtain this information from other sources such as private agencies or public records.

Criminal histories or “rap sheets” are not public record in every state. In some states such as California, these are only available to certain employers where employee background checks are required by State and/or Federal law such as ie: public utilities, child care services, law enforcement, security companies, defense contractors.

Credit checks

A credit background check is very often part of an employee background check, however employers are required to obtain the employee’s or applicant’s written consent under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, FCRA (15 U.S.C.

President Wilson entered World War I to make the world “Safe for democracy.” The rise of the Fascists and World War II shattered his dream and the hopes of civilization that cataclysmic upheavals could be forever avoided. The long Cold War created a perilous world where major powers jockeyed for control with the threat of weapons that could destroy every living thing on earth. The fear of communism exerting a domino effect on small poverty-stricken countries led to the quagmire of Vietnam and the embarrassment of the Contra affair.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the world breathed easier, believing that, at last, human efforts could concentrate on growth, space exploration, and scientific advance, rather than pressuring its greatest minds into developing new means of destruction.

Throughout history, there have always been regional conflicts, ethnic discord, and religious clashes. The super powers of each era have eventually stepped in and calmed the storms through diplomacy, cultural pressure, or an armed presence.

Iraq was undoubtedly a crude, cruel, despotic regime under Saddam, killing its own citizens, brutalizing and maltreating its minorities, and rattling defiant sabers at a world that failed to grant it the dignity and respect it felt it deserved. Its value to the world defined primarily by the black gold pooled beneath its deserts, it was one more unsettled region like Rwanda, Liberia, or Somalia. It demanded the same kind of response: unwavering political efforts to assert human rights, economic pressure from the world community and condemnation from its neighbors.

Instead, the greatest superpower in the world shunned continued diplomacy and invaded. The same dream of creating peace and democracy was verbalized at every opportunity. The lessons of unrestrained aggression and ignoring ethnic/religious diversity, first learned centuries ago in ill-fated crusades, were ignored. When you know you’re right, it’s hard to concede that everyone else isn’t wrong.

What have we created — a more unstable, troubled, and violence-prone world; an earth that shudders at the armed convulsions racing across its brittle, fragile surface. As new fires flare across the entire Middle East, we hear rumors that an attack on Iran is in the planning stages. From the world’s model of a democracy forged out of the wilderness and renowned for its desire for peace, prosperity, and humanity, we have become the hated face of the enemy, an imperialistic throwback to the 19th Century. We have become the all-powerful but hated Rome of the ancient world.

Despite its grandeur, Rome fell. Not to another superpower, but to the ceaseless raids of uncivilized savages who used their own brand of violence to defeat a culture that knew only violence to maintain itself and made no effort towards exploring peaceful options.

Are we doomed to repeat the past?

Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of two interactive workbooks: The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual and Diet With An Attitude: A Weight Loss Workbook, she also issues a monthly ezine, The Worker’s Edge, and various mini-courses on weight control, she can be reached at her Social Psych Blog drvirginiabola.blogspot.com
as well as at her weight control information site www.DietWithAnAttitude.com/index2.html

At times I laugh when I see companies, banks, educational institutions laying so much emphasis on the deployment of firewalls, anti-virus, server room protection e.t.c.

Yes firewalls, anti-virus are good but without a comprehensive information security program in place all these security technology tools will only provide a false sense of security. When we start thinking about information security, we need to think about security as a system not a single technology.

Let Us take a Hypothetical Scenario

A company has over 5 million clients. It has an e-business website. It has deployed firewalls, anti-virus solutions and other vendor security solutions. It conducts 90% of its business through its e-business website.

A Hacker studied the situation and asked; how do i get at this company?

What is the weakest link in the companies information security model? Why the weakest link? The hacker knew that going through the firewall, the intrusion detector systems would take him time which he was not willingly to spare. The hacker found out through painstaking research and study that the over
5 million customers were the weakest link.

The attack followed;

• A fake website of the company was created.
• E-mails were sent to the company’s over 5 million customers.

The E-mail read.

Dear customer,

We have deployed new security solutions that will help increase the security of conducting business with us through our website. Please kindly enter your contact and billing details, by clicking on this link. www.wilbroser.com/details.html.
Thanks for your cooperation.

Yours faithfully,
Alex Brown
Head of IT

Result of the E-mail

Out of the 5 million customers, 3 million of them clicked the link and reentered their contact and billing details.
The remaining 2 million felt indifferent and didn’t respond to the mail. The credit card information of over 3 million customers was stolen.

Why did the Hacker Target the 5 Million Customers of the Company?

The hacker found out that to commit e-fraud, it will take more effort and time going through the firewall, anti-virus and the other security solutions of the company.

The thought of the weakest link came. The company has never embarked on a security awareness training program for customers. A lot of emphasis has been on staff and security solutions.

The hacker identified the customers as the weakest link. Having identified the weakest link , the attack was launched.

Why Was the Attack Successful?

1. The over 5 million customers. None could tell the difference between a fake copy of the company’s website and the company’s website.

2

The design of outdoor mailboxes have remained fairly constant over the past 100 years, despite the changes in the way information travels. Individuals receive many correspondences through the mail that are filled with personal information such as bank account numbers, health records or credit card info. While in most situations, this information would be kept under lock and key, mail is often left unsecured in outdoor mailboxes, easily accessible to the public.

To most people, the security of their mail isn’t even an afterthought. To that end, all of their personal information, from bank statements to tax information, is an easy target for individuals bent on getting it. When you consider that identity theft accounts for losses close to one billion dollars each year, metal mailboxes no longer seem an excessive protection

Although it may seem like an extreme solution to use metal mailboxes, not all metal mailboxes are built the same and not all of them are convenient to use. In fact, most people probably picture large metallic contraptions built with a heavy cement base. Although these designs can keep your mail safe, they do little in the way of d

Portable generators are great to have when the power goes out. But when using a generator, there are three dangers that you need to know about in order to avoid them. They are electric shock, Carbon Monoxide poisoning, and fire.

When using a generator there is a chance of getting electrocuted. Make sure to keep your generator dry and if it rainy or wet don’t use. Operate your generator on a dry surface under an open, roof-like unit. Don’t touch the generator unless your hands are dry.

Carbon Monoxide (CO) poisoning occurs when you inhale your generators toxic exhaust. Most important, is to never use a generator indoors. This includes: inside your home, garage, basement, crawl space or any partial or enclosed area which is connected to your living space. Using a fan, or opening windows and doors is not enough to prevent CO build-up.

Finally, preventing fires while using your portable generator can be done easily. Propane, gasoline, kerosene, and any other flammable liquids should be brought outside for storage. All containers should be properly labeled.

Don’t store fuel near any fuel burning appliance like a gas water heater. Invisible fumes can move along the ground if fuel is spilled. It can then be lit by the appliances pilot light. Lastly, turn your generator off and wait for it to cool down before refueling. Spilt fuel could ignite on a hot engine.

George Thomas helps you find the right portable generator for your needs. Choose from electric, diesel, gasoline, Coleman, and more.

There are a variety of measures you can take to insure that your PBX is safe from hackers.

Listed below are tips you can use right now to protect your business.

1. Take steps to secure your authorization codes on a permanent basis. Remind employees of the need to keep all access codes secure and change them frequently.

2. Contact your equipment vendors and ask for any and all information on the available security systems in place to detect toll fraud. They should also provide information on monitoring services available to help you quickly detect unusual usage.

3. Work closely with your PBX administrator to ensure that all of the PBX security features available are in place and are being implemented.

4. Unless needed for routine business, block outgoing international calling, 809 and 900 calling capabilities.

5. Conduct regular and routine auditing of your telecommunication systems and bills, especially just after regular vacation months and holiday seasons. It is during these times of year that PBX toll fraud most often occurs.

6. Wherever possible, limit the number of employees who are authorized to use remote access. And if possible, change pass codes and authorization codes when an employee permanently leaves the company.

7. NEVER transfer a call outside your PBX if you are unaware of the identity of the caller. Instruct employees that phone companies will never ask customers to be part of a “test” – no matter how official the caller may sound.

8. Always be alert to possible PBX abuse signs. These could include repeated calls of short duration, sudden increase in 800 usage, or unexplained changes incoming, outgoing or especially after-hours calling patterns.

9. Consider out sourcing your telecom bills to a firm that will provide bill paying and audit services on an ongoing monthly basis. You’ll save money across the board and catch toll fraud at the time it happens.

Karen Thatcher is President and CEO of TelCon Associates, Inc. a 32 year old telecom audit and bill management firm. For a 66 page report on PBX safety and security, visit http://www.telconassociates.com

The ‘Consumer Product Safety Commission’ reports that thousands of people are treated for fractured bones, bruises and cuts from improper use of ladders every year. Hundreds of people die from ladder related injuries.

Some common safety tips that can be followed for a smooth working with your little giant ladder are:

(i) Inspect the little giant ladder. Make sure the ’spreaders’ can be locked when open and that there are ’safety feet’ on the ends. When choosing a little giant ladder be certain the ladder is able to carry the amount of weight that will be applied.

(ii) Check for ‘loose or bent rungs’ of your little giant ladder.

(iii) The little giant ladder should be kept clean of oil, grease, mud, snow and other slippery materials.

(iv) Carry a ’single or extension’ little giant ladder parallel to the ground. Hold the side rail in the middle of the ladder for balance.

(v) The ground under the ladder should be level and firm. Do not set your little giant ladder up on a muddy surface.

(v) Set the base of your little giant ladder one foot away from the wall for every four feet of ladder height.

(vi) Do not use bricks, boxes, etc. to raise the height of ladders to make them gorilla ladder.

(vii) Keep ladder off from windowpanes or sashes.

(viii) While using the ladder as an orchard ladder, turn the it sideways, and ease into the tree.

(ix) Face the ladder when you climb up or down. Hold on to the side rails with both hands. Use a rope to lift heavier equipments.

(x) Keep your body centered ‘between the rails’ of your little giant ladder. Wear shoes with ‘non-skid soles’. Do not wear ‘leather-soled’ shoes; they can be slippery.

(xi) Never use a ladder in high wind. Never stand on the top rung of any ladder.

And the last and not the least never leave a raised ladder unattended.

We offer the best online ladders and ladders accessories source. Check it out now on the Gorilla ladders and Little giant ladder guide.

Find all about ladders on – http://www.multipurpose-ladders.info

Many people are interested in purchasing security
mailboxes. This can be for many reasons. One is that you
may be on vacation and you want to be sure your mail is
safe while you are away. Some people like the idea of
security mailboxes because they are vandal proof (no one
can put an M-80 inside and blow it up)! But the main reason
for purchasing one is to prevent identity theft from
someone stealing your mail and obtaining your personal
information. But before you look into purchasing security
mailboxes, there are some things you should know.

Not all security mailboxes are as good as others. Be sure
that the one you purchase is approved by the Postmaster
General. Also, be sure that there are no exposed locks, and
that it is tamper proof and wrench proof. You also need to
be sure that it is welded together and not just pop riveted
together. Be sure to pay attention to where the mail
retrieval location is. Some are located in the rear, which
can be a bad spot if you place your security mailbox in
certain locations.

The last thing you should know is that security mailboxes
are quite expensive. They can range from $350 to $850. This
price does not include installation. Keep all of this in
mind before purchasing yours. Once you get one, you will be
glad you did. You will have peace of mind knowing that your
mail is safe, and your identity as well!

You can now browse our large selection of Security
Mailboxes online. To view our complete and
comprehensive selection of Security Mailboxes, visit:
http://mailboxes-for-sale.partnersinsuccess.net/