Think Like an Intruder

Look at your home or business and think of ways you would get in to your home or business. Then figure out the best way to protect and detour attention in those areas. The most common intrusion is through the front door. It’s surprising to many that burglars can easily smash their way past a deadbolt locking system.  Always remember to double lock your doors. Another way intruders have found to get into homes is called Lock-bumping. Burglars use a small tool kit to essentially bump all of the locking pins in the lock into place. An appropriate home security system will stop both of these threats before they materialize. Homes with an alarm systems are four times less likely to have a burglary.

The Right Company

It’s easy to become overwhelmed at the various choices for home or business alarm systems.  Choose a company that will install a system that will meet the needs of your home. An alarm company should work with you to determine the most important components for your system and licensed technicians should ensure that the system is installed and functions to meet your needs.

Standard System

A standard alarm system should have sensors on all the doors and windows so that if a door or window is opened, the alarm sounds.  The next level of security should offer motion sensors throughout the house that can be activated during times when you’re away.  This will catch any movement within the house and sound the alarm.

Added Benefits

Most security systems should also support fire detection and medical alert. These are valuable added benefits to have in the home. Fire detectors are able to immediately alert the fire station of a situation whether you are at home or away. Medical monitoring has been incorporated into many systems in order to provide emergency aid to senior citizens when they are in need. The latest and most technologically advanced systems allow remote activation and status monitoring via internet and cellular phones. For more information on the latest systems go to pinnacle security.

Monitoring

Just as important as the sensors and devices in the home, is the monitoring network which supports it. A quality monitoring network will be aware not just of intrusions, but system problems and attempts to disable the system without authorization. Today’s more sophisticated monitoring services are able to quickly contact you to confirm an emergency, or even monitor additional devices, like smoke alarms and medical-alarm pendants. Many of the system will offer two-way voice technology. After the alarm has been triggered the monitoring agent can communicate or hear what is going on in the home in order to get a better idea of the emergency at hand.

When buying a system, ask about what monitoring services are available. Additionally, be sure to choose a company that has a partnership with an alarm monitoring facility that will ensure your family’s protection around the clock.

Estimate

To get started, choose a company that is willing to install a system to your specifications.  The company will likely set up a consultation during which a technician will come to your home, take measurements, scope out sensor locations, windows, and doors, and will then prepare an estimate.  If you are satisfied with the price, installation can usually begin immediately.

SAN FRANCISCO—Golden Gate Capital, a quiet, behind-the-scenes player in recent years, made news with its recent acquisition of Devcon Security, and it’s likely to be making more news soon, operating executive Christopher B. Munday told Security Systems News.

Noting that Golden Gate, an $8 billion private equity firm, still has $4.5 billion of available capital, Munday said the “plan here is to keep building out and ultimately to build a global, fully integrated security company.” Golden Gate, he said, wants to be “in control of everything, creating accounts, [providing] equipment, holding, servicing and monitoring accounts.”

Golden Gate in June of 2008 acquired Pinnacle Security, a summer-model company based in Utah. A September 2008 $150 million credit facility (with LaSalle/Bank of America) enabled Pinnacle to keep its accounts. Operations were beefed up there in October 2008, when Pinnacle bought the sales force and technical department of Icon Security, a smaller summer-model company in Utah.

Two weeks ago, Golden Gate acquired Devcon Security. Munday and Robert Farenhem (CEO and president of Devcon) have said that there are no immediate plans to combine the two companies. However, Munday, who serves as chairman and CEO of Pinnacle Security, will join the board of Devcon as chairman, with the goal of looking at the synergies between the two companies.

“We’ll get the relevant people involved from both companies … to explore areas of cooperation,” he said. “We don’t know how it will shake out,” Munday explained. “We may find nothing, some things, or a lot of things” that can be done to “improve the synergies at the back end of the businesses.”

While Pinnacle, a summer-model company, and Devcon a traditional security company, have starkly different sales methods, there are likely lessons the companies can learn from each other, he said. In addition, Pinnacle will clearly be interested in Devcon’s monitoring capabilities, Munday said.

On the acquisition front, what kinds of security companies might Golden Gate be in the market for? Munday said another alarm company, a monitoring company, or a small technology company are all possibilities.

John Gilligan, Golden Gate Capital principal added, “We tend to be very long-term, strategic-oriented investors; we seek out management teams to partner with and tend to acquire a number of businesses in the space.” For example, Golden Gate acquired 70 different software companies in nine years. “We acquire competitors to scale the company, [to acquire] new product lines, to spread into new geographies. All of those obviously are applicable to the security space.”

(Originally posted at http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/?p=article&id=ss2009104N8G9c )

OREM, UTAH (May 2009) – Pinnacle Security, an Orem based home and commercial security alarm company,
recently took their mantra “Your Life. Secure.” to a very literal level with the implementation of their Employee Wellness Program.

“The program was developed with our employees in mind,” explains Christopher B. Munday, Chairman and
CEO of Pinnacle Security. “Establishing a healthy work environment starts at the core. If our employees are
happy and healthy they will feel and perform better,” adds Munday.

Pinnacle’s wellness program facilities are located under one roof with their corporate headquarters and include a full gym, weight room, sauna, showers, lockers and full-length basketball court.

Adam Christian, a Compliance Manager who has been with Pinnacle for nearly a year, has discovered the
benefits of the wellness program. “I have more energy at work,” says Adam. “With a busy lifestyle it is hard to fit working out into my schedule. Having an on-site fitness facility makes it easy for me to get a full workout and shower within my lunch hour,” Adam adds.

An additional asset to Pinnacle’s program is its renowned professional trainer, David Stroshine. Not only is
David a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning
Association, but he has also trained such professional athletes as Fahu Tahi (Minnesota Vikings) and Fui
Vakapuna (Cincinnati Bengals). “My vision for Pinnacle employees is to empower them with the knowledge and tools that will help them accomplish their health and fitness goals,” explains David. “Overall, I want to create a lifestyle at Pinnacle that promotes health and productivity,” adds David.

All Pinnacle employees and their immediate families are eligible for voluntary participation in the new wellness program. Free one-hour health and wellness workshops are also conducted each month. From nutrition to exercise to general body wellness, the workshops provide something for everyone.

In the near future a second phase of the wellness program will be implemented, which includes massage therapy and employee field trips that foster general activity and wellness.

In a time where many companies are cutting costs and employees, Pinnacle Security is flourishing, hiring more staff and providing additional benefits to help improve the overall workplace and experience of its employees.

About Pinnacle Security

Pinnacle Security is an industry leader in providing quality residential and commercial security solutions that
help individuals realize the peace-of-mind that comes from protecting the things that matter most. Pinnacle is headquartered in Orem, Utah and has sales offices throughout North America. Founded in 2001, Pinnacle is a long-standing partner of GE Security, a wholly owned subsidiary of the General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). For more information, please visit www.pinnaclesecurity.com.

- Successful Utah company gives back to the community through sponsorships -

OREM, UTAH (February 2009) – Pinnacle Security, a Utah based company that provides residential and commercial alarm systems, is giving back to its employees and the community by sponsoring Universities through academics and athletics, most recently becoming the premiere athletic sponsor at Utah State University.

“Our partnership with Pinnacle Security has been a tremendous benefit to our campus and student population,” said Landon Day, General Manager for Aggies Sports Properties. “The overall appearance of our sports facilities has improved; plus, Pinnacle’s presence has really benefited our students on the great summer employment opportunities provided through Pinnacle.”

But Athletics isn’t the only area in which Pinnacle is helping out; the company realizes that school can become as busy as a full-time job for many of its employees.

“We do everything we can to provide students the opportunity to achieve enough success in the summer to provide for themselves financially throughout the school year,” explains Christopher B. Munday, CEO of Pinnacle. “Overall, we recognize that college campuses benefit from more committed and responsible students as much as we do, and we are pleased with the opportunity to help with this endeavor,” Munday adds.

Additionally, many of Pinnacle’s employees participate in Utah Valley University’s Intramurals resulting in Pinnacle’s recent donation of 350 high-quality jerseys as part of an effort to give back to its employees.

UVU Intramural Director Beau Earls was thrilled by the donation and what it meant to his program.

“I have never heard of another intramural league that is able to supply jerseys of this high quality to every participant,” said Earls. “It’s made things so much easier for the officiators and the teams were ecstatic to have these.”

More
Pinnacle Security – Supporting Employees Through University Sponsorships

“We owe much of our success to our employees and the Utah community as a whole. Participating in community events and sponsorships like these provide a nice opportunity for Pinnacle to reciprocate,” said Munday.

Additional Universities supported by Pinnacle Security include Idaho State, BYU-Idaho, and Southern Virginia University.

# # #

About Pinnacle Security
Pinnacle Security is an industry leader in providing quality residential and commercial security solutions that help individuals realize the peace-of-mind that comes from protecting the things that matter most. Pinnacle is headquartered in Orem, Utah, and has sales offices throughout North America. For more information, please visit:
http://www.pinnaclesecurity.com

Local company wants consumers and employees to feel “secure”
OREM, UTAH (January 2009) – Utah-based Pinnacle Security, one of the nation’s top residential and commercial security corporations, headquartered in Orem, Utah, is launching an updated version of the Pinnacle brand in an effort to further strengthen brand awareness and focus as the company looks to continue its expansion across the United States and Canada in the coming year.

“We’ve achieved consistent growth through the years and we’re excited about the future,” said Christopher B. Munday, CEO of Pinnacle. “We felt like it was a great time to refresh the brand and grow further our brand awareness with a new look and slogan as we continue forward.”

Pinnacle executives said the new slogan, “Your life. Secure.”, is the result of two questions: “How do we want our consumers to feel when they purchase a security system?” And, “How do we want our potential recruits to feel when they adopt Pinnacle’s employment opportunity?”

Munday said he hopes the new Pinnacle brand will deliver a message of assurance and confidence to Pinnacle consumers and employees alike.

“We’re still the same company we were before, but more than ever we want our customers to know we are watching out for them and they should feel safe with Pinnacle behind them,” said Munday. “On the same note, we want our employees to know we are here to help them develop and secure their future.”

In addition to updated messaging, Pinnacle has recently posted a new state-of-the-art digital sign on Interstate-15 next to the corporate office in Orem.

Pinnacle Security is an industry leader in providing quality residential and commercial security solutions that help individuals realize the peace-of-mind that comes from protecting the things that matter most. Pinnacle is headquartered in Orem, Utah, and has sales offices throughout North America. For more information, please visit:
http://www.pinnaclesecurity.com.

“We are trying to combat the stress students are feeling in their pocketbooks as the cost of higher education continues to increase,” said Christopher B. Munday, CEO for Pinnacle.“ A college education is important – especially during times of economic pressure – and  students shouldn’t have to sacrifice a degree to try to stay afloat.”

According to the National Survey of Student Engagement, 66 percent of college seniors are working for pay off-campus. Although research shows working 15 or fewer hours a week can be positive for students, the American Council of Education found that working more than 20 hours tends to detract from the academic experience and jeopardize successful completion of a degree or certificate. Pinnacle strives to decrease that pressure with a summer direct sales program that can help students highly subsidize or totally pay
for their educational costs in just a few months of work.

“I always knew that I wanted to complete my college degree,” said Puck Herriford, a third-year Pinnacle sales representative and student at Utah Valley University, “and Pinnacle has provided me with the opportunity to do so debt free. I don’t know of too many students who can say that.”

In addition to helping students pay for college, Pinnacle is also investing more into educating its sales representatives – mostly college-age students – about setting and reaching financial and career-oriented goals, and continues to see growth company-wide.

# # #

Pinnacle Security is an industry leader in providing quality residential and commercial security solutions that help individuals realize the peace-of-mind that comes from protecting the things that matter most. Pinnacle is headquartered in Orem, Utah, and has sales offices throughout North America. For more information, please visit
www.pinnaclesecurity.com.

But some Utah companies are still seeing positive results, including Utah-based Pinnacle Security, and hoping to help turn things around.

“At Pinnacle we feel like we’ve actually been able to help during these hard economic times,” said Christopher B. Munday, CEO of Pinnacle. “We’ve been creating more jobs and bringing more people on board and hopefully that helps the local economy during these difficult times.”

Throughout 2008, Pinnacle employed more than 500 employees at their corporate office in Utah and another 1,500 sales personnel throughout the United States and Canada. Continued growth coupled with growth projections in 2009 have the company currently committing to additional facilities in Utah County.

“While it is difficult to fully understand the impact the economic downturn will have on our business, we remain very optimistic that Pinnacle will experience significant growth in 2009,” said Steve Hafen, COO of Pinnacle. “With this growth, it is likely that Pinnacle will be increasing hiring in the coming months.”

Pinnacle Security is an industry leader in providing quality residential and commercial security solutions that help individuals realize the peace-of-mind that comes from protecting the things that matter most. Pinnacle is headquartered in Orem, Utah, and has sales offices throughout North America. For more information, please visit: http://www.pinnaclesecurity.com.

Of all the home security features that are available with home alarms the system’s capacity to dispatch the police is often the most overlooked. Traditional alarm systems are designed to simply send a signal to a dispatch station which, in turn, contacts the local police department for dispatching an officer. As with all alarms, of course, the dispatch station will contact someone in the home in order to verify the authenticity of the emergency. Without over-the-phone confirmation of the emergency, however, the police can only be dispatched on an unconfirmed break-in which doesn’t carry nearly as high a priority. The significance, then, is that during a real home emergency how could anyone expect an intruder to answer the phone and verify the break-in?! This has resulted in many poorly dispatched break-ins because many service providers (even though the actual alarm system hardware may be the newest the industry has to offer) simply don’t provide the best monitoring services available.

Two-way voice intercom service has quickly become the superior monitoring service available and certainly has eliminated the limitations that occur with the previous. The feature is very simple: instead of the dispatch station calling you at your home phone number during a break-in they can actually immediately communicate with the homeowner, or verify that there’s an intruder, via an intercom (that works through your phone line) that is built directly into your alarm system. Once activated, the intercom feature’s highly sensitive microphone can easily detect up to 2-3 times more than the human ear is capable of hearing thereby giving the dispatch station the advantage of hearing any movement or communication throughout the entire home. The intercom’s speaker enables a live operator to speak to anyone in the house as well. Obviously, this feature is meant to allow the operator to determine who is in the home or what the intruder is doing. Additionally, this feature provides something of false alarm prevention in that the homeowner, if they’ve accidentally activated the alarm themselves, can simply provide the operator a password which identifies them as the homeowner and the police won’t be sent.

Overall, this service provides a greater level of security by providing the means whereby the police can be more quickly dispatched as well as more efficiently. No longer is it necessary for monitoring companies to guess whether the alarm signal they’re receiving is legitimate or accidentally. Instead, they can just listen!

Burglars usually avoid homes that have people in them, but not always. What will you do if someone breaks into your home while you’re there? While this is very unlikely to happen, there are exceptions to every rule, and it’s best to prepare now rather than try to figure out what to do during the actual event.

If someone breaks into your house while you’re not home, you are safe and only your valuables are at risk. If they break in while you’re home, your life and the lives of your family members are at risk.

There are several things you can do to help avoid being robbed while you’re at home.

Don’t invite strangers into your home. Salesmen, repairmen, and so on, should not be allowed into your house under most circumstances. Sometimes this is unavoidable, such as when you have to call the plumber. Obviously the plumber, electrician, etc., has to come into your house to solve your plumbing or electrical problem. However, it’s possible to build a rapport with these people over the phone or on your front porch. You should research the company before you hire help. Only allow people you feel safe and at ease with. If they give you a funny feeling, there might be a good reason not to let them into your home.

Don’t give out keys to your home to people, no matter how much well you think you know them. Be especially wary if someone offers to house sit for you while you go out of town. If they wanted to rob your home, it would very easy for them to walk into your house, take your things, and later stage a robbery and “show up” to the scene and call you and the police, alerting everyone that there has been a break in. You could end up saying “thank you” to the very person who stole your valuables and your family’s sense of home security.

Setup lamps with timers. You can purchase timers that you can plug lamps into. These timers control when your lamps turn on and off, giving potential intruders the impression that you’re at home even when you’re out of town. You can also use these regularly, but be sure to vary the time the lamps turn on and off, so robbers don’t discover your routine.

Taking the time to invest in a safe home, especially a home with an alarm system, is a very smart move that is sure to bring you peace of mind. ]]> http://pinnaclesecurity.com/news/home-security/make-your-home-safer-with-home-security-systems/feed/ 0 http://pinnaclesecurity.com/news/home-security/cellular-advances-in-home-security/ http://pinnaclesecurity.com/news/home-security/cellular-advances-in-home-security/#comments Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:00:51 +0000 admin http://test.web-optimize.com/pinnacle/news/?p=12 Due to the ever-changing technology of the telecommunications industry, the Alarm Industry has also had to make it’s own changes to keep up. There was a time that no phone line meant no protection. Most monitored alarm systems require that a home be equipped with a traditional, analog landline telephone service to allow the security system to communicate (in the case of a break-in) with an emergency dispatch station (for police notification). However, as the ubiquitous use of cell phones continues to increase, as well as the increasing popularity of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone services offered by internet companies, traditional landline phone services are becoming more scarce and, consequently, pose a problem for alarm systems that have always relied on phone-line communication to notify the police of a break-in. The past few years, however, have given the Alarm Industry some new solutions to this challenge—the most successful being the use of cellular units for communicating between the home and the emergency dispatch station in the even of an intrusion.

Similar to a cell phone, this device works in conjunction with the rest of the security equipment and, rather than transmitting information via phone lines, will transmit emergency information to a dispatch station through wireless signals. This means that no phone line is necessary. Unfortunately, many alarm companies still follow the practice of only using equipment that will perform in combination with a landline phone because the use of cellular communication units (cell units, as they’re more commonly called) can be costly and the subsequent need to pass that cost to the consumer results in fewer people willing to make the purchase. However, Alarm.com, one of the primary companies that has led the industry in cellular communication, is one of the few companies that has proven itself successful in finding a way to provide cellular alarm services for those without traditional landlines.

Unlike many other cellular service providers, Alarm.com’s specialized focus has allowed them to develop cellular security equipment (partnered with General Electric) that is small enough to be unobtrusive (and in some instances completely hidden in accessory hardware equipment) and at a price close enough to traditional monitoring costs to be effectively indistinguishable. In fact, with this type of affordable equipment, homeowners now have the option of choosing to add, as an additional protection, a cellular unit to their system to backup a traditional phone line in the event of any failure. More importantly, with these new advances, home security is now technologically, and financially, accessible to homeowners without traditional phone lines.