Today’s new reality of interconnected risks creates complex challenges for home security.
This is especially true for high-value homes owned by high-net-worth (HNW) individuals that are often targeted by strategic criminals who understand how to manipulate both cyber and physical boundaries.
Increasingly, physical and cybersecurity are intertwined. A great deal of what we do online creates real, significant offline risks. For example, with home addresses linked to our names in publicly available databases, it’s easier than ever to discover where someone lives and other personal information.
High-value homes attract attention and are often featured in the media, with or without the homeowner’s permission. Coupled with social media postings about a person’s possessions, friends and habits, some people inadvertently provide criminals or adversaries with enough information to steal property or inflict physical harm.
|Prevention
Insurance can and does cover the repair or replacement of many physical objects, including valuables such as fine art and collectibles, but comfort and peace of mind following a theft or home intrusion are hard to regain. A better approach is to take steps to prevent those incidents from occurring in the first place.
Agents and brokers can offer more value to their high-net-worth clients through comprehensive security assessments. These confidential assessments, conducted onsite by experts, should encompass these five key elements at a minimum:
(Photo: Shutterstock)
|1. Physical security
A client’s home should be a place of safety and comfort at all times. A thorough security assessment begins at the perimeter and looks inward at all access points for possible vulnerabilities. Strong locks on exterior doors and windows and adequate lighting and proper landscaping to minimize hiding places and reduce proximity to above-ground access points are important steps in keeping intruders out.
Give careful consideration to lock placement; even the strongest locks can be bypassed if an intruder can break nearby glass and open the lock by hand. Similarly, a garage door opener kept in a car parked outside the garage may give inadvertent access to the home.
An easily overlooked security gap is the storage facility where a client may keep seasonal or surplus items, which may include valuable collections. Restricting access to the facility and considering the potential for loss reduces the likelihood of theft or damage.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
|2. Inner circle
Many high-net-worth individuals employ housekeeping or other domestic staff or provide access to other trusted individuals. This inner circle should be subject to due diligence at hiring as well as periodic background reviews after hire, as personal circumstances and involvements do change over time.
Unfortunately, the most trusted members of a client’s circle often have the greatest opportunity to do the most harm. A regular inventory of who has access to the property and an accounting of all keys is important to maintaining the inner circle.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
|3. Law enforcement
A comprehensive security assessment examines local criminal activity as well as the community resources available to respond to an incident at the client’s address. What is the average response time by police and other emergency responders?
It’s also important for owners of high-value homes to build relationships with local law enforcement. Such relationships can improve law enforcement’s awareness and monitoring of activity. This can be especially important when local ordinances on fencing or security gates limit a client’s ability to improve perimeter security.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
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4. Life safety and security systems
Life safety and security systems come in many forms, with a variety of features that help to monitor conditions in and around the client’s home. Depending on the need and the circumstances, security systems can send alerts and video to a connected device anywhere, enabling clients to check on their homes or items in storage facilities while traveling.
For valuable items, such as art, additional security measures and sensors are available. If a client’s home has a safe room, it must be easily accessible and kept ready at all times with a first aid kit, a source of fresh air, food and water, the ability to review security cameras, and a means of communicating with emergency responders.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
|5. Cybersecurity
Maintaining strong personal cybersecurity has become as important as physical security. Many high-value homes have complex systems that control functions from lighting and irrigation to security and sometimes even door locks.
A best practice is to maintain separate networks for each function: one for sensitive activity such as banking and financial operations, one for the home’s control systems, and one for guest or staff access.
Jordan Arnold is a senior managing director at K2 Intelligence and head of the firm’s Private Client Services practice. He can be reached at [email protected].
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