Fire Detection/Prevention: Getting the Alarm and Getting it Right

/by American Alarm Blogging Team

October 6 is Fire Prevention Week in North America, and it’s an appropriate occasion to think about how we can ensure our loved ones, homes, and property can be better protected. At American Alarm, we take the danger of fire especially seriously: A deadly fire’s aftermath was the reason why the company was launched.

Fire remains a very real threat in New England, and beyond. An alarm (preferably with a monitoring service) is a proven way of proactively detecting the presence of smoke before the fire is out of hand. For instance, this past September, an empty Waterford, Connecticut house was engulfed in flames before neighbors could report the blaze and the fire department could locate it.

Read more →

5 Ways Seniors Can Prevent Falls: Stay Independent

/by American Alarm Blogging Team

October 1 will be the United Nations’ International Day of Older Persons. It’s an opportunity to consider our senior citizens and ensure they are as independent, safe and comfortable as possible.

Read more →

Empty Nest with School in Session? Beware Burglars

/by American Alarm Blogging Team

Classes have started, and children are out of the house in New England. That means during regular business hours, your home is empty and more vulnerable to burglars than in the summer months.

Burglary is a serious problem. In 2017 — the most recent year with reliable statistics — some 1.4 million burglaries were committed across the United States, says the FBI. That’s about 18 percent of all property crimes committed in 2017.

The overall cost in property loss ran to about $3.4 billion, and the robbery of residential properties represented some 67 percent of all burglary crimes. Unfortunately, police only solve about 13 percent of burglary cases, Alarms.org reports.

Read more →

School Vandalism is Costly: Security Systems Can Help

/by American Alarm Blogging Team

School is back in session, which means school vandalism unfortunately tends to rise accordingly. Surveillance and security solutions can help school administrators to deter or resolve such incidents.

School-related vandalism — a type of crime involving any damage or defacement of school property — is a real problem in Massachusetts and beyond. According to the Vandalism at School website, the annual price tag to remedy this kind of crime runs at around $8 billion nationally.

Read more →

Restaurant Employees Take Big Bites of Their Companies’ Profits

/by American Alarm Blogging Team

New England’s small- and medium-sized restaurants (and other businesses) face a persistent internal problem: employee theft. Luckily, there are measures you can take to prevent it.

National statistics of employee-on-employer crime are sobering, according to a Forbes article. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75 percent of employees have stolen from their employers at least once. Companies with 150 employees or less are particularly vulnerable to internal financial or data theft, as well as other similar crimes.

The Chamber also determined that roughly 30 percent of business failures are caused by employee fraud and abuse. The toll of workplace thieving to the United States economy is some $50 billion annually, says a CNBC article (citing a statistic from Statistic Brain).

Cash on Tap in Restaurant Business

Because the bar and restaurant industry is often a cash business with few paper trails — one that relies heavily on people-intensive processes — there is an especially high risk of employee fraud and outright theft. There are many vulnerable points, from servers to wait staff, bartenders to kitchen help, all the way to the back office employees.

Read more →