Is Your Door As Strong As Your Lock?

Products to make your door as strong as your lock.  Spadina Security Incorporated installs the best deadbolt locks available in Toronto.  Customers often ask “What about the door?”  The answer is here.

We also sell products that reinforce your door.

Latch guards and other door armor work to reinforce the weakest parts of your door.   They block many types of attacks that have become common place.  Ice pick attacks, drilling and “credit card” type attacks are foiled by our door armor.

Once you have installed a Mul-T-Lock Hercular deadbolt, we make sure your door is strong enough to resist an attack.

Very simple and inexpensive products can really help to keep burglars out of your home and business.

A Mag latch guard installed on a storefront glass and aluminum door can protect the cylinder, drill points and the frame from attack.  The Bolt Buddy strengthen the wood of the door and frame that often break when force is applied.  Hingemate stop the door from being removed when the hinge pins are removed.  There are many wrap plates available, some from Canadian manufactures.

What about glass?

Many security professionals recommend violating the fire code to provide good security.  That is not necessary. LEXAN is a clear, colourless plastic-like product that is virtually unbreakable.    It takes many hits with a sledge-hammer before Lexan will break.

Spadina Security often installs LEXAN behind glass to make it more difficult for theives to reach in and unlock your door.

More information about LEXAN is available on our LEXAN page.

Need to Know: Securing Your Windows

Toronto is one of the last of the big cities in the world where we believe that our valuables can be protected by a piece of glass. Travel to any other big city and the large display windows in the front of stores are protected by a variety of methods.

In Toronto some business must be more careful than others. If you sell cigarettes then make sure you protect them from the smash and grab burglar.

Still most burglars in Toronto do not want to attract attention to themselves by breaking a window. They will always look for another way in before smashing in a window. The reason for this is that most windows become very dangerous when they are broken. A burglar may find himself sliced open by a piece of broken glass that has become a razor-sharp knife when a brick is thrown through the window.

There are several options available to the business owner and home owner who want more than glass to protect their valuables.

Window Film has had some surprising success stopping burglars – but only when installed correctly. Many companies in Toronto do not install window film securely. The result is the window does nothing to keep out a burglar. Film is held in place by the glass and glue. This is not security.

Film should never be installed on Tempered glass. Most storefront doors use tempered glass which breaks into thousands of tiny pieces. This is a type of safety glass. It is easily removed even when coated with film.

Double glazed window panes should not have film installed on it. This type of glass will crack because of the film.

New glass is available from most glass companies. Like the windshield of your car, this glass is actually a sandwich of glass with plastic in between two sheets of glass. In testing it turns out that the plastic, glue and glass become stronger than either component by itself. The glass and plastic strengthen each other and the glue plays a role as well. More testing is needed to fully understand why this type of glass is so much stronger.

Steel Window Bars are still the best security we have to protect a storefront or basement window. We can make attractive designs and even use a variety of colours.

The design of the window bars is key to good security. Beware of thin metal construction or poor workmanship. Get references from satisfied customers. Ask for letters of references. Don’t accept sloppy work.

Window Bars and Gates made outside of Canada and the USA should be considered weak. Hollow material and aluminum rivets allow burglars to rip bars to shreds.

Buy window bars made from iron or steel. Solid 1/2″ bars and thick tube should be used.

A new option is Lexan – unbreakable plastic (not a film). This clear and colourless polycarbonate can absorb the force from a hammer and not break. It must be installed with a strong frame of aluminium, steel or wood. The stronger the better.

Safe Ratings

SAFE RATINGS
There are many different types of safes for different pruposes.

F-Rated safes are designed to keep paper from burning for a set number of hours. They are made from thin steel, clay and plastic. These materials are not intended to keep a burglar from taking what you value.

B-Rated safes are constructed from tough steel and strong lock. They are desgined to withstand attacks from burglars. Paper will burn in these safes when exposed to fire.

C-Rated safes are designed to withstand fire and burglary attacks. The “C” stands for combination fire and burglary ratings not to be confused with combination locks.

Media safes are new. They are designed to protect media, such as computer disks and memory keys, from fire. Most media storage is made from plastic that melts at a lower temperature than paper.

Diversion safes are common everyday items that have a hidden compartment which items can be hidden. A soda can, a book or even a wall outlet can really be a safe spot to keep items you value.

Do You Need A Safe?

DO I NEED A SAFE?

Can you keep a secret?

If you can’t, don’t get a safe. If someone knows you have a safe they will think you have something worth stealing.

Never tell anyone – NOT EVEN FRIENDS AND FAMILY – that you own a safe!

If you own jewelry, if you keep cash in your home or if you have important documents, then yes you need a safe.

Valuables must be kept secure behind several layers of security. The lock on your front door is the first security measure a would-be thief will likely encounter. Ensure that it is installed correctly and is functioning. A second layer could be a burglar alarm system that lets you know when your first layer has been compromised.

The final layer should be a safe. Safes are designed to be very difficult to open. A thief who has broken into your private space, then sets off your alarm will not have the time to attempt to open a safe.

Smaller safes should always be bolted down.

Safes protect valuables from a variety of conditions including burglary, fire and flood.

Before pricing out a safe make sure you know what your needs are.

RATING OF SAFES
A-rated = Affordable
B-rated = burglary resistant (Rated by UL)
F-rated = fire resistant (Rated by UL)
C-rated = combination fire and burglary resistant
D-rated = diversion safe

Talk to our locksmith to determine which type of safe is right for you.

The Mul-T-Lock Hercular Deadbolt

This is the Rolls Royce of our fleet of locking products. This deadbolt has become the leader in the deadbolt lock industry. Now the competition is striving to keep up with the innovations our customers already enjoy. First, the lifetime finish – the brass will not corrode. Second, the stronger bolt housing, and third, the self-adjusting thumb-turn. The competition is still falling behind. The interlocking bolt, double sided key and the 3-in-1 feature are unique in the Canadian and USA markets.

New Burglary Prevention Products for 2010

The security market has changed over the last ten years.  As we enter a new decade the home owner and business manager have new tools to protect property and information.  This list highlights the market leading companies that Spadina Security Incorporated has followed from the last millennium and new companies bringing new blood to the fight against crime.

Paradox Security Systems

Grafica Keypad

Finally, colour screens have come to burglar alarms.  The Grafica has always been the coolest keypad available – it will play happy birthday for you on your birthday and show you a floor plan of your home or business with open doors, windows, motion detectors and other zones.  Now our friends at Paradox have improved this keypad with a LCD colour screen.

When not in use family photos or corporate images can be displayed on the screen, similar to a digital picture frame.

IP100

Have you ever wanted to check if your alarm system is armed from your smart phone?  With the IP100 module you can access information from your alarm system and even make changes to the system remotely.

Your alarm system can now email you when it is armed or disarmed and when zones are in alarm.

Mul-T-Lock

Hasp Lock

Only Mul-T-Lock can take one key and make it work on every lock you use in a day.  To that end they have released this weldable lock.  Ideal for any gate, this lock can be welded directly to a steel gate or bolted to any gate.

The usual benefits of Mul-T-Lock apply:  Key control, pick and drill resistant and, of course, tamper resistant.  (All that means is that Mul-T-Lock looked at common attacks and added built-in protection)

TLO – Temporary Lock Out

Mul-T-Lock continues to give us advanced features without batteries.  This new TLO option takes mechanical keying to the next level.  Available on any cylinder that allows 360 degree rotation of the plug.  In basic terms, you can turn off some keys and then turn them back on by using a special key.

You can make a server room inaccessible on the weekend.

LSDA

Classroom Intruder Lock

Schools have new threats – intruders and guns.  Many Universities and schools already have special lock down procedures in place where teachers lock their classrooms to prevent access to armed madmen.  The problem is that teachers must open their classroom door to lock it.  Now we offer the “Intruder Function” for classroom locks.  This allows a teacher to lock the outside handle of the door with a key from the inside.  For safety reasons the inside handle always remains unlocked.

CCTV

New Digital Video Recorders (DVR)

Video technology is finally coming of age – and at reasonable prices.  Now we can watch our babies on video for a few hundred dollars where ten years ago a similar video system would cost a thousand dollars.  Twenty years ago parents had to be content with audio baby monitors and my parents had to actually get up off the couch and look in the room to see if I was ok when I was a baby.

Today you can watch video images of your driving with our Car-DVR, you can see who came to your front door with our door viewer DVR, and you can record your wife’s play on your Pen DVR.  All at reasonable prices.

Use this DVR to record what you see when you are driving.

This DVR records an image of people who come to your door.

This pen is actually a video camera and recorder.

New Technology in Closed Circuit TeleVision

A good Camera system is like a glimpse into the past.  It is an amazing tool that offers great improvement in security.

This new system offers more than a glimpse.  It is almost like being there even after it has happened.

The crime dramas on TV use movie magic to zoom in on the crime scene and enhance the suspects face in a matter of seconds.  In real life situations we did not have such powerful tools until now.  Capture, a trusted CCTV and DVR manufacture that SSI has been recommending for years, has launched a new type of video camera and Digital Video Recorder that allow pan, tilt and zoom features even after the video has been recorded.

This is a difficult concept to explain to the layman but I will go over some CCTV basic operations and terms then delve into the new technology.

When a security guard is watching a camera system he often has the ability to move one or more camera with a joystick type control.  He or she can move the camera to look in a different direction (Pan and Tilt) and adjust the lens for a close up shot to see more detail, or a wider angle to see more of what is happening (Zoom).  While the camera is moving the image on the screen is being recorded.  When the recording is being reviewed later the image on the screen will only show what the camera was looking at when the recording took place.

The OmniScape-360 system is different.

The camera does not look at one small view of the room but at the whole room at the same time.  The camera is usually mounted on the ceiling in the middle of the room or other area to be monitored.  The lens allows the camera to see below and around it.

The resolution of this camera is three megapixels.

The result is one camera covering a much larger area than four common cameras.  And the new, extra value features this perspective creates are impressive.

First, this camera allows the security guard watching it to pan, tilt and zoom with no moving parts.  To the owner of this camera it means that there are fewer parts to break.

Second, when reviewing the recorded image the viewer can also pan, tilt and zoom – because the whole room is being recorded not just one small view.

This feature is the most difficult to understand.  With the common cameras used today the recorded image is static.  You only see what is on the monitor screen.  Usually this means a few seconds of useful images as a person walks by.  Very useful information is gathered from those few seconds and CCTV systems are extremely valuable to law enforcement and crime prevention.

OmniScape-360 allows the viewer of recorded images to follow the suspect on the screen as he or she walks around the room.  Tracking their every move.

Third, the camera itself can track people walking through the room or area.  The image on the screen that the guard watches is no longer mostly the carpet.  Now the guard is looking at people as they walk around the room the camera virtually moves with the people.  Kind of like having a camera man aiming the camera for you or the guard using a joystick to follow a suspect.

Fourth, virtual guard tours.  This refers to the camera scanning the area just as if a security guard were walking through the area on a tour.

Fifth, the OmniScape camera can analyze the image and alert an operator if a specific event occurs.  An example is a piece of luggage left in an airport unattended.

Sixth, Privacy Blanking is the term used to avoid watching specific areas in the field of view of the camera.  For example, you can choose not to record your neighbours property or a bulletin board with private workers information.

Seventh, this one camera can work like four virtual cameras.  Each with its’ own pan/tilt/zoom abilities, programmable guard tours, etc.  It can really replace four common cameras.

These features are new.  Several other advanced features are also included like motion detection and automatic day/night adjustment.

This system is priced on our web store:  ssi.vstore.ca and more information will be available on our website shortly.

Why should I upgrade to Mul-T-Lock?

The Mul-T-Lock Deadbolt is uniquly suited to residential and commercial doors.  It’s great strength is tempered by it’s beauty and variety of finishes.  Why do we locksmiths recommend this new generation of deadbolt?  It is something we do every few decades when the criminals we defend you from learn too many of our secrets, our skills.

Now burglars are making copies of your keys for $2.00 at the corner store, they have learned some of our picking techniques like bumping open a lock and they are using new technologies like cordless drills to open your lock, open your door and enter your home and business.

 The last time this happened is recorded in infamy.  You have heard the term “Skeleton Key” and you understand that it is a key that can open any lock.  This is now common knowledge even though that type of lock is obsolete and rarely used for security purposes.

The lock industry rose to the challenge of defending your home against easy access by designing the now common paracentric pin tumbler lock.  This is probably the type of key you have in your pocket right now.  This generation of lock technology represents a great leap forward in security and has been effective at keeping burglars out of your home and business for the last fifty years.

Once again the lock industry has redesigned the lock.  Several designs stand apart from the rest.  We call this new generation of locks “High Security” which refers to the insurance industries requirements for high risk premises.

To qualify for this high security rating, which is regulated by Underwriters Labratories, a lock must resist picking attacks for at least one minute, resist physical attacks such as drilling, prying and hammering, and offer a control over copies of the keys.

The Mul-T-Lock deadbolt has met these requirements, exceeded them and then added two features not available from other high security locks.  The first of these features is called the 3-in-1 user rekeyable option.  This means that if you loose your keys you can lock them out without calling a locksmith to repin the lock.  The second feature is the interlocking bolt.  The bolt actually gets bigger after it enters the door frame.  This means that the Mul-T-Lock deadbolt offers exceptional protection against attacks with large tools such as crowbars.

The cost of this exceptional deadbolt is $300 including installation until the end of October.  After that the price goes up to $249 + Installation which brings the price up to over $350.  There is the less expensive option of simply changing the cylinder in your existing deadbolt.  This is priced out at $150 including installation but does not offer the improved physical strength only the pick resistance and the key control.

MicroShield – NEW Antimicrobial Coating for Door Knobs

Finally, the door knob has evolved.  This time to protect your health. 

During the SARS outbreaks in Toronto we got used to washing our hands after we touched an elevator button or opened a door.  As a Locksmith I have noticed that people are wearing down the paint around push plates on doors as they try to avoid picking up a microbe from the last person who pushed open the door.

The answer to our fears is a new coating for locks and door hardware that uses Silver Ions to kill microbes.  Silver is a natural killer of Microbes – this is why Silver is so popular in eating utensils.  Microbes mistake the Silver Ions for food and though Silver is toxic to microbes it is harmless to humans, animals and the eco-system.1

This new finish is available on a selection of door knobs from reliable manufacturers like Sargent and Corbin as well as push plates and pull handles.  We expect large facilities related to health care to be the first to change over to the new coated products.  Many such facilities have already started using Silver Ion cleaning products such as SilverClene24 to clean hard surfaces and keep them microbe free for 24 hours.  SilverClene24 is designed to be effective against viruses as well as Microbes.

The MicroShield coating continues to work for the life of the product – even if the coating is scratched it will continue to effectively kill microbes.  Normal cleaning practices should continue on all coated door hardware.

The products mentioned in this article are available for purchase from Spadina Security online, by phone (416) 706-7233 and in our affiliiated stores.

What is the Value of a key?

The quick answer is whatever is behind the lock.  The more common answer is $1.99.  Not really an fair trade.  Less than two bucks for everything you own.

Identity theft is in the news right now but few people actually understand what it means.  The crime that defines this type of attack, at least to my mind, is for someone to sell your house pretending to be you.  You actually find out about the crime when the new “legitimate” owners show up in a moving truck and nowhere else to go.

Banks are developing new techniques to deal with this kind of crime but you need to use common sense to protect yourself from similar crimes.

Back to the value of a key.  The old standard common sense tells us that if you have the key to a door you must be the owner of the building, you must have the authority to change the lock, and permission to copy the key. 

 We need some new common sense.

Master keys are being copied without the building owner’s permission or knowledge.  About half the break and enters in Toronto happen with no visible signs of entry.  The loss of control over your keys, your buildings, your business all for about $1.99 at the corner store has got to stop.

Locksmiths and lock manufactures are working together to make keys more secure.  Sometimes the customer is miffed that they cannot just walk into any store and make a copy of their key.  More often they find comfort knowing that their employees, friends and family also cannot make a duplicate key without their permission.

Permission to make a key for your door is no longer tied to possession of the key but to an identity card that carries your signature.  Do not loose this card.  Without this card you can not prove you own the lock and keys and you will not be getting any further keys made for your lock(s).

This idea makes sense to Underwriters Labratories of Canada.  You know the company by the ULC stickers on just about everything in your home from lighting fixtures to TVs and electronics.  ULC is a private company who writes the rules that  insurance companies follow.  This makes life easy for the insurance companies who only have to ask for the ULC qualifications when assessing a client or a claim.

Control of the unauthorized copying of keys is a requirement for UL437 – the section that deals with locks needed to protect valuables.  If your insurance company deems you to be a risk of filing a claim they will ask you to meet this standard.