Modern Security Consulting

No system is perfect. However, for the home it is hard to beat a well trained dog.

Dogs have been used for security and companionship by humans for over 15,000 years.

Even with the incredible advances of technology, the role of dogs in military, law enforcement, and even commercial security has never been greater.

This is our sentry and she has been a faithful jewel of our family for 8 years now.

I'll bet she's even capable of recognizing faces.

...and little chance that she will ever use her knowledge about your family, against you.

Our dog sounds scary, but when approached by a stranger, he rolls on his back and wants his belly rubbed.

She's a beauty all right! Still miss my Hannah but she was a natural in protecting us but the gentlest dog ever with non-threatening situations. We lost her in 2008 to cancer but now have 6 other dogs that will certainly give us warning if anyone enters without permission.

When I was working in secure environments there were certain sites that had all the locks, tests, personnel etc. but the final check was getting by the dog! These sites were secure!

Sounds like they were protecting the dog!

One of my friends had a job coming up with creative security solutions for a nuclear lab. My favorite was the one where hundreds of fish hooks with high strength lines attached are shot out into a hall or room from all directions entrapping anyone trying to get in.

If you really want to be cruel, dump a couple buckets of ball bearings on the floor as a followup.

Sounds like a beautiful bit of installation art to me.

They had other beauties like filling the whole room up with foam, which would later be dispersed with a flash grenade.

This is sounding more like 'Home Alone - The big boys with big toys'

Not that theres anything wrong with that concept, but certainly here in the UK there would be issues with causing injury to an intruder. Recent legislation and judicial guidance has swung the balance a little back toward the offended party but you still have to be proportional. I have always like the signs on the Securicor vans (used for transporting cash and other vlauuables in the UK) that use highly staining water - to ruin the cash and colour your skin / clothes and glue guns

here in the UK there would be issues with causing injury to an intruder.

Not here there aint buddy!!!

Mrs Wal loves the fish hook idea. She's planning where to put them now.

Nice dangly arrangement hung from the ceiling that's high enough off the floor so our dogs don't get jagged....Cheaper than razor wire too.

We're sold.

In reality we also have laws that would prohibit putting up traps in homes or at least there is legislation that can be used by the police or victims of such traps.

However, for the federal government securing buildings, particularly of national security, all bets are off.

However, we do take a more favored approach to the use of deadly force when defending one's castle in the US and particularly in Florida.

The definition of "castle" not only includes homes, but tents, cars, hotel rooms, etc. Anyone committing a forceable felony against you in your castle has no legal protection from the law for the use of deadly force against them by the lawful occupant/owner.

Career criminals hate it and are lobbing hard to make their workplaces safer.

If she's anything like mine, she'll use "ass scanning" technology to identify authorized personnel.

What's really awkward, is mine is a wiener dog and I have to hold him up to perform the "scan"

:)

My issue with all the advanced high tech stuff relating to keeping people out of a restricted area is that no matter how advanced the security system is there is still a physical door that has a physical locking system that has to be activated by some sort of mechanical movement of which is ultimately controlled by a simple on/off power signal to a relay that sends power to a motor or solenoid that is keeping the door locked.

If you know where the control relay, power and their related signals come from that tell the door locking mechanisms to lock or unlock all of the high tech gear in the world becomes meaningless.

And while you're clapping yourself on the back for getting the door opened or the lock unlocked, you become cut in half with a simple shotgun.

Just ask Joe Biden...

Last Halloween, Jill killed a witch, three aliens, and a scarecrow....before they realized that she forgot to take her medication.

Or of course if some nice helpful person holds the door open for you if you are carrying something!

This is obviously the wrong audience for an industrial security blog.

Based on the little I know about our members, AH might have a use for it in the workplace.

We've been robbed numerous times, but always by a certain family member. No facial recognition equipment required.

I was shown a neat camera, at a place where I buy things like this, that recognised faces in the image and continuously pasted small passport style photos along the bottom (or top) of the video stream of every face in the camera's field of view.

No matter how we tried (different facial expressions, backgrounds, left or right even upside down) my face seemed to be recognition proof. Everyone else's face in the image was detected. Don't know why mine wasn't. I liked the idea that I was somehow naturally self cloaking.

I liked the bit in "Reds" where they come to a door, having passed one with eye recognition, and Bruce Willis says, "the password changes every six hours." and then he punches a hole in the wall to get to the back of the lock and so open the door.

We were collecting information for a modification at a nuclear power plant, when my colleague found his magnetic pass had stopped working. Within seconds, one of the armed security guys appears and says, "Mr. xxxx, you do not have clearance for that door." To be fair, the doors did all look alike.

Quite frankly I think this guy showed how easy it is to beat the system:

Just become part of it!