Home Security News

Online Safe Deposit Boxes

Here's a new idea for storing important information: online safe deposit boxes.  It sounds like they work much like physical safe deposit boxes that are kept at the bank, except they're for something more intangible than goods: information.

You can store copies of your insurance policy, account numbers from credit cards, copies of the family's passports... any information that, if lost or destroyed in a fire, you'd have a hard time without.  Because it's all stored online at a secure site, you can access your "safe deposit box" from anywhere in the world at any time of day.

The site is Keep You Safe, and you can check out an online safe deposit box there.  You can get a small box for free, and if you need something bigger, prices start at $3 a month.

Fingerprint Garage Door Opener

We've talked about new technologies like fingerprint doorlocks for residential use, but how about a fingerprint garage door opener?  This isn't a portable garage door opener like the one you keep in your car; rather, it gets installed on the side of your house by the garage.  Press your finger to the opener, and the garage door flips open.  Instead of giving your kids (or other family or friends) a pin code to a home security system that they have to remember or a house key that could be lost, you can simply add their print to this unique security device.  Assuming your garage allows entrance to the rest of the house, it can be the only "key" anyone will need. 

The Biometrix smartTOUCH Model GD-A1 garage door opener is, according to the company, easy for a DIY type to install, and it comes with a control pad you can use to input people's fingerprints.  It's no problem giving people like workmen temporary access and then wiping their prints from memory when they're no longer needed (the device holds prints for up to nine people). 

http://www.biometrx.net

Biometric Bank Cards

The new cash cards from Japan's Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group look pretty much like any other bank card, but there's one key difference: they have images of their owner's blood vessels stored inside them.  At the ATM, the account owners take out the cards and place their hands over a scanner (developed by Fujitsu Ltd.).  The palm-size machine compares the scan with the pattern stored inside the card's circuitry, and if the match is made, the customer is free to withdraw up to the bank's maximum daily limit.

Technology like this is designed to cut down on fraudulent transactions and give bank customer's peace of mind about their savings. 

Source: "New Biometric Identifier Is at Hand" from the July 21st, 2005 edition of the Wall Street Journal (print).

Electronic Pet Doors

Pet doors can be a bad idea from a home security standpoint (if your dog can slip in the backdoor, so can a thief--even doors for small dogs are  problematic, since someone can stick an arm through and unlock the lock), but electronic pet doors may provide a more secure alternative. With these pet doors, your dog or cat wears a special collar embedded with a radio or infrared transmitter.  The receiver in the pet door opening mechanism only tells the door to open for your pets.  If the door is designed correctly, burglars should have a hard time gaining entrance through the entrance.

Related articles:

Guide to Pet Doors
How to Install a Pet Door

What is Biometrics?

I keep reading the term biometrics, especially in relation to fingerprint authentication technology, and must confess I don't know exactly what it is. I hopped on over to Wikipedia and read that biometrics refers to "the science and technology of authentication (i.e. establishing the identity of an individual) by measuring the person's physiological or behavioral features."

So, how does that relate to home security? Well, biometrics is increasingly becoming available not just for big corporations protecting sensitive material but for residential door locks, including for safes and vaults. The article goes on to mention that "biometrics usually refers to technologies for measuring and analyzing human physiological characteristics such as fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns, and hand measurements, especially for authentication purposes."

Hm, are you looking forward to the day when you come home, give your doorlock that knowing look, and it clicks open based on what it sees in your eye? If nothing else, it'll be nice not to have to worry about lost keys anymore.

Biometrics at Wikipedia