The last few years have seen the emergence of various smart home innovations. In addition to streamlining everyday processes, these interconnected systems have elevated household security to higher standards. The days of safeguarding your home with old-school alarms and locks may be long past. Fully automated surveillance solutions with “set it and forget it” functionality are all the rage now.
With smart systems innovating more rapidly than ever, it’s exciting to see what’s next in home security technology. Explore the latest in advanced residential safety and emergency response features to prioritize.
1. Smart Outdoor Cameras
24/7 surveillance is a key component of any digital home security framework. However, not all cameras are created equal. The best ones feature wide-angle lenses with a 180-degree field of view to cover more of the property in one swivel and eliminate blind spots.
They also have high-definition footage capture technologies to identify faces, license plates, and other critical details for enhanced monitoring. Night vision capabilities ensure no loss of image quality regardless of the time.
2. Motion Detection and Tracking
Smart tracking features add an extra layer to your home security system by immediately alerting you of movement in the camera’s field of view. These systems can often distinguish between people, animals, and vehicles, reducing false alarms.
Advanced cameras can also track suspicious activities, keeping the subject in focus even when they move around. This function is handy for monitoring specific areas like entrances and exits around your home. You can customize the camera’s alert sensitivity and set it to trigger predetermined actions like turning on strobe lights when the subject reaches a particular area.
3. Smart Locks
Though quite effective, traditional locks are increasingly ineffective against the sophisticated antics of today’s class of criminals. Smart lock technologies represent an additional complexity they must solve before accessing your property. Biometric authentication features like fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, and voice activation offer enhanced security and convenience.
You can also control the locks remotely from your smartphone to manage access from anywhere. For example, if the pet sitter arrives and you’re not home, you can unlock the front door without being physically present.
4. Real-Time Threat Monitoring
Emergency notification systems have become increasingly prevalent in residential security infrastructure. These smart home innovations leverage the Internet of Things technologies to provide real-time monitoring and alert you of various threats like fires and floods.
For example, a digital sensor in your basement can track intrusions during heavy floods and immediately notify you when the water reaches a specified level. In these types of emergencies, the quicker you know about them, the more effective your response will be.
5. AI-Enhanced Security
The integration of AI makes smart systems smarter. For example, getting an alert every time your kids or pets accidentally trigger the motion detector can be annoying. AI’s powerful data analysis capabilities can enhance pattern recognition and behavior tracking so the security system can better distinguish between genuine threats and harmless situations. This feature minimizes the frequency of false alarms and improves the efficiency of emergency response teams.
Securing Your Smart Home Innovations
In a somewhat ironic way, your home security technology needs safeguarding, too. Modern systems cost anywhere from $200 to $2,000 for wireless devices and up to $1,600 for wired installations. There’s a readily available market for these items, which makes them appealing to threat actors. Consider these tips to protect your equipment and improve your overall security posture:
- Restrict access to the devices: Place your cameras and sensors in areas that are not easily accessible to unauthorized individuals, such as high-mounted areas or behind furniture.
- Reinforce your doors: Experts recommend installing 3-inch or longer screws in your external doors to make it harder for a burglar to remove the door and break in.
- Inspect systems periodically: Check your smart devices regularly for signs of physical damage, tampering, or unusual wear and tear.
- Conceal the wiring and cables: Thieves don’t have to damage a home security device physically to shut it down — they can just cut the wire. In fact, this might even be a simpler way to knock out the system. Keep all cables out of sight and reach.
- Follow cybersecurity best practices: The average home has 46 internet-connected gadgets, any of which can be an entry point for hackers. Because of their interconnected nature, a compromised device directly impacts all other connections within the network. By now, you should know to change default passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and secure your Wi-Fi network as the minimum measures for your smart home systems.
Enhance Security With Smart Home Innovations
From advanced surveillance to real-time threat monitoring and adaptive ML algorithms, embracing new forms of home security technology can streamline your daily life. More importantly, it complements existing safety mechanisms, providing extra protection and peace of mind.
