Mastering Home Security: The Layered Home Defense Strategy

Today I'm going to share with you how you can protect your home and family by shifting how you think about home security. All of that and more ahead on The Secure Dad Podcast. With data breaches on the rise, it's more important than ever to take control of your online privacy. This is where DeleteMe stands out. They emphasize transparency and control, allowing you to manage your personal information effectively. When it comes to your personal data, trust and security are non negotiable.

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Before we get started today, The Secure Dad celebrated eight years of helping families live safer, happier lives. On September 5th, 2016, I launched TheSecureDad.Com as a blog. It grew to a best selling book and a podcast. By the way, we'll reach podcast episode number 300 in October. So thank you for being a part of this journey. I appreciate all of the kind emails and messages. I'm excited about what we are going to do in this next year.

So today on the podcast, I wanted to talk about a new way to think about securing your home. Most people think that securing your home is just locking your door, setting the alarm, and having a firearm if necessary. But what I want to do is show you that protecting your home is much more than that. And also easier than you think. Now, I remember playing with action figures when I was a kid. I would create these elaborate battle scenes for the Rebels and the Empire.

Part of my strategy was a layered defense using starships, physical barriers, and snipers. I did this because I wanted the Rebels to do everything they could to keep the empire out and prevent them from fighting at close quarters where all the important people were. My brain has kinda, I guess, always been this way. When I started thinking about my home defenses as an adult, those concepts came in handy.

As a protector, I wanted to do everything I could to prevent a physical encounter with an intruder at close proximity inside my home. That's a nightmare. That is a really, really bad situation. Being prepared is key for your safety and the safety of your family. A fully developed plan is what helps families stay alive in potential deadly situations. When a house is on fire, that's not the time to draw up a fire escape plan.

You need to know what it is so that when you smell smoke Everyone in your house knows what to do

Back in 2018 I developed The Secure Dad layered home defense strategy. This was a great shift in thinking when it came to protecting my home and my family. Many people just want to like have cut and dry answers to what is always going to work for home security, anywhere you are no matter what your family type is. And unfortunately, that's just not the case. Every family is unique. Every home is different. That means that every family's needs for home defense is different.

This is why having a strategy is so important. This is not necessarily about specific details are going to work across the board. This is a way of thinking and looking at home security that can be customized for every family, in every home. The Secure Dad layered home defense strategy consists of four simple steps: discipline, deter, fortify, and defend. The purpose of a layered home defense strategy is to ensure that you have multiple means to secure your home and your family.

I've been a guest on several podcasts that talk about home security, and they asked me about this very specific scenario. And the scenario is this. I'm sitting in my recliner watching TV in my living room when somebody bursts through, the door with a gun and tries to take control of my home. This is a very scary situation. But when we break down this scenario, we see that it becomes very close. Very personal, very fast. A person is now standing a few feet away from me, threatening my life.

So how do we keep that from happening? How do we keep this scenario from becoming reality? First, we want to push this person a few feet away, back out to my front door, where they came in. Then I need to decide, what do I need to do to secure my front door? Then we have to think about how easy it was for them to get through the door. And then finally, we have to look at what made them decide to even target my house in the first place.

This is the basic understanding of a layered home defense strategy. Protecting your home does not start at the front door, it starts at the street. If I can keep an intruder from even considering my home is a target, then I have won the fight before it's ever started. If I can keep people from thinking that my home is going to be an easy target, then I have already won. A layered home defense strategy helps me do just that.

The first part of a layered home defense strategy is discipline. This is where you and I put in the work every day to develop smart habits to protect our home. This means teaching our kids to lock the door when they leave the house. It means making sure that we close the garage door when we leave for work or for school in the morning. This means creating a secure routine to check on doors and windows, ensuring that they're locked, and then arming our home security system before we go to bed.

We can have the greatest defenses in the entire world, but if we don't set them, they are useless. So we must be disciplined in prioritizing safety and making sure that these simple steps are done every day.

The most overlooked part of home security, in my opinion, is deterrence. Far too many people think that home security is passive, that no action will be required until somebody kicks in your door and the alarm goes off. What if we took simple steps to ensure that an intruder never wanted to select our home as a target, preventing that nightmare scenario from playing out. The deterrence layer of the strategy dissuades thieves from choosing to attack our home.

We need to make sure that our home is unappealing to a thief, not because our home isn't valuable, but because of the subtle warnings that indicate we know what we're doing. We can do this by adding exterior lighting to our home. This not only lets the intruder know that they can't sneak up on your house or they'll be seen if they approach, but it also adds curb appeal, which is great. Another great way to deter a thief from breaking into your home is having a dog.

Now, you don't need a trained German Shepherd, you can have a derpy little Chihuahua if you want to. While dogs may not attack and defend you with their lives, they can bark and alert you to a developing situation. I hate to say it, most people think their Golden Retriever is suddenly going to become a canine superhero in a life threatening situation. I guess we've all seen too many movies, but unless your dog has had extensive, specialized training.

They're most likely going to bark, and then they're going to run and hide. Do not count on your dog saving your life in a defensive situation, at home or really anywhere else. The best thing that you can hope for with an untrained dog, is that they will alert you to a noise, Then they're going to orient themselves in the direction of that threat and bark. Everything else is up to you. I feel that dogs are a great deterrent for break ins. They're like little security alarms with legs.

But they are also security alarms that poop. So, you know, there's a trade off.

The third layer of our home defense strategy is fortification. The purpose of fortifying your home is to prevent or delay an intruder from entering by force. You want to make it hard for somebody to get in so that hopefully they'll just give up and they'll move on. If they are determined to get in, then you want it to take longer for them to do that by buying time to prepare to call for help. Making upgrades to your home security is very important.

Keep in mind that fortification doesn't need to repel a siege from a medieval army. Thieves strike quickly, and if they don't get the results that they want fast, then they're much more likely to abandon the attack. Fortifications should be made to last for several minutes, not days. As I have said for a long time, the number one way that a thief enters your home is through the front door. The third most popular way is through the back door. And this is according to FBI stats.

So, as we can see, doors are very important to thieves. They can get in and then take your stuff out of that doorway. One of the greatest fortifications that you can make to your home's exterior doors is a FlipLok. A FlipLok is a secondary lock that can withstand 1,600 pounds of force and will make it really hard for somebody to kick down your door. Chances are they'll give up way before they ever get through.

So far, in our layered home defense strategy, we've covered discipline, deter, and fortify. These are the outer layers of the plan. They are designed to keep people out of your home and buy time to respond to some sort of a threat.

Now is the time to examine the layer of home defense that I call DEFEND. A family protection plan for your home is when you consider how you plan to respond to an intruder in your house. Just like a fire escape plan, you must consider how many people live in your home, who needs to act, where the danger is coming from, and how you can protect your family until help arrives.

The Layered Home Defense Strategy is designed to keep you from reaching the point where you must defend yourself and your family inside your home. If we correctly execute the Layered Home Defense Strategy, the chances of a physical confrontation with an intruder are greatly reduced. If you must enact the defend portion of the strategy, that means that the other layers have failed and you are now in a very serious situation.

Defending your home from a potentially armed intruder is a very scary thought. I don't blame you. The advantage of the strategy that we've been going over is that it deters a break in from ever happening. However, this may not be enough to repel determined predators. And by that I mean, sometimes the intent of the criminal is outweighs the concern of being caught or the attacker could be under the influence of alcohol or drugs and not behaving rationally at all.

When defending your home consider what tools you'll need to protect yourself. That means a firearm, pepper gel or other means of physical defense. Decide today what you are comfortable with doing and knowing the consequences of using those tools. Also train with them so that you're prepared for this worst case scenario. Today when things are calm, come to an absolute understanding of what you're willing to do to protect your family.

If you can flee your home during an invasion, this is a great way to create distance and give yourself time to respond. If you can't get out, then designate one room of your home as a safe room. A safe room is a place where your family needs to assemble in the case of an invasion. If kids are old enough, then they can get to the room on their own.

Smaller children, elderly adults, and those with special needs may have to be assigned a responsible person to get them to the room as quickly as possible. Your safe room needs to have at a minimum, a telephone, windows facing the street, and a limited number of doors. It also needs to be accessible by every member of your family. If all the family members sleep on the second floor, then the safe room needs to be on the second floor as well.

This room needs to be used in the event of a daytime break in too. Gathering in a safe room should be fast and simple. From here, you can call for help, fortify your door in that room, and then physically defend yourself.

So after taking a look at all of this, we understand now that securing your home goes far beyond simply locking the doors and then setting the alarm. A comprehensive, layered home defense strategy built on the pillars of discipline, deter, fortify, and defend is essential for protecting your family from potential threats. Remember, the goal is to be proactive, not reactive when it comes to your family's safety. For more on this, check out my Amazon bestselling book, Home

If you want to know more about a layered home defense strategy, pick up my book, Home Security: The Secure Dad's Guide, which is on Amazon. There's a link for you in the show notes. Take back your privacy and personal data with help from DeleteMe. Get 20 percent off a privacy plan when using the code DAD at checkout. Fortify your home with FlipLok. For more, go to FlipLok.com and use the discount code SECUREDAD to get 20 percent off your entire order.

For more from The Secure Dad, consider subscribing to the official Secure Dad YouTube channel. There you can watch all of my interviews and find exclusive content. Just search for The Secure Dad the next time you're on YouTube. I'm Andy Murphy reminding you that our safety is our own responsibility.