Welcome to the first in a series on home security topics. We'll start with basic home security, i.e. hardening your home, move on to home invasions, i.e. active defense and look at panic rooms or hardened rooms, i.e. shelter in place. There are many ways to look at home defense and many ways of implementing a home defense plan. Many of the choices you make will be dictated by your surroundings, do you own or rent, home or apartment, etc. One thing that remains the same no matter the location is the need to trade space for time.

Time is the most important factor when thinking about home security. You need time to get your family away, prepare your defenses and wait for law enforcement to arrive. Time is the enemy for a burglar or home invader. Speed and invisibility are their allies. We'll show you how to neutralize those allies.

This should be our first question when trying to get a picture of who burgles and invades homes. According to the FBI, most burglars are under 25 years old and are male. Why do they do it? Most of them do it for money to pay for living expenses: food, shelter, etc. and, more commonly, drugs.

They look for things easily converted into cash. VCRs, CD players, iPods, Cell Phones, Jewelery and, of course, cash. In the latter two cases, diversion safes might be a part of your plan. Since burglaries occur when a person is not at home, personal safety considerations are not paramount. Keeping your stuff is.

You might wonder what the deal is with my title. Well a burglar looks at your home in one of two ways. It's either easy to get into, in other words an egg that breaks with one good wack, or it's a nightmare of alarms, diversionary tactics and a quick trip to jail, in other words an onion. Also homes that look like they're protected get much less attention from a burglar than one that does not.

It's best to think of security as rings around your home. Each ring has something in it that makes it harder for the burglar to get in your home or at your valuables. When you think of protecting your home, think outside-in. We'll cover each of these steps one by one devoting an entire article to each.

When talking about security a home has several layers.

• Neighborhood Layer - This includes things like a neighborhood watch or agreements between neighbors to watch out for each other, graffiti in the neighborhood, police response time, gang activity, number of owners vs renters, etc.
• Yard Layer - This includes things like bushes, tools left scattered about, easily accessible windows, doors that are concealed from the street, attic access, etc. Your garage door deserves special mention here as a prime candidate for a burglar to use.
  
• Door and Window Layer - Doors and windows, being especially susceptible to entry into your home get their own section. This can include cheap hollow pine doors on the outside of your home to leaving windows open, a sure invitation to a crook.
• Living Area Layer - This can include things like the front foyer, living room, dining room and kitchen. These are areas that are most used by the family and you will need to plan your defenses here. For burglars it could involve cameras and/or alarms with autodialers to notify you and the police.
• Bedroom Layers - These are where you and your family are most vulnerable. If a burglar decides to try at night, there's a chance you and your family might become victims of home invasion. I'd consider making a bedroom or bedrooms part of your secure layer.
• Secure Layer - This is your final redoubt. This is the place you keep your video recording devices, alarm control panels, self defense weapons. This is the one place you and your family can flee to if you're ever the victim of a home invasion.

Apartments can be a bit tricky to provide defense in depth. Since they are so small and you share living space with other people, reaching out to your neighbors is the most important thing. Many strategies that you would use for a home are impractical for an apartment. Motion detectors, for example would go off anytime anyone walked by your door.

There are ways to defend yourself and your stuff however. We have dogs in our apartment and they act as a deterrent to crime. If you don't want the fuss and muss of a real dog, you can get an electronic watch dog. Digital Surveillance Cameras and Visec Surveillance Softwarecan give you adequate coverage over most,if not all, of your apartment.  Electronic security devices can be there when you can't.

Apartments and condominiums provide a special case, one which we'll devote an entire article to.

We'll explore this in other installments of this series, but for now realize that home invasions are much worse than simple burglaries. In the end, if you lose your stuff, there's always the chance of recovery or you can always replace it. Home invasions are a threat to you personally and a direct threat to your family.

In many ways preparing for a burglary will give you a step up when dealing with a home invasion. Much like a fire or other calamity in the home, practice and drills will determine how prepared you and your family are in case of the real deal. It's one of those things that's important, but not very urgent, at least not until it happens, then it becomes very urgent.

It's pretty popular in society today to say "It's just material posessions, let it go."  There are several major flaws with that sort of thinking.  First, your posessions are yours.  No society can exist for long when people cannot be sure that their posessions will remain their posessions.  Besides you've worked for your things, you deserve the use of them without fear of somene taking them from you.

The second flaw has to do with moral hazard.  If we, as a society, allow people to steal from others and the only threat is moral censure, then we've already lost the fight against crime.  While I don't advocate public floggings or cutting the hand off that steals, theft should be punnished in such a way that the punnishment itself acts as a deterrent.  Judges in the past have made people wear signs when caught.  While this may seem medieval and cruel, well so is taking something that doesn't belong to you.  In any event, personal safety and security is not the province of society, but the responsibility of individuals.  What have you done today to meet your responsibilities?