If you do one thing for your home's security this month, make your house take longer to get into than the one next door. Almost every residential break-in is opportunistic and fast, and almost all of them go through a ground-floor door that was either unlocked or easy to force.
That's good news, because it means the order you do things in matters more than the size of your budget. Here's the order.
How break-ins actually happen
Forget the movie version. The pattern in police statistics across Canada is consistent:
- Entry is usually through a door — front, back, or patio — not an upstairs window.
- It's over fast. Many burglaries take well under fifteen minutes start to finish.
- Most happen in daylight on weekdays, when houses are predictably empty.
- Very little force is used. A kick near the lock, a pried patio slider, or simply trying the handle covers a huge share of entries.
So what you're really buying is time, noise, visibility and unpredictability. Everything below does one of those four things.
Start here, in this order
1. Fix your doors first
Your deadbolt is almost certainly fine. Your door frame probably isn't.
The weak point is the strike plate — the metal plate the bolt slides into, usually held by two half-inch screws that bite into thin trim. One kick splits the jamb, and the door swings open with the lock still perfectly intact.
- Replace those screws with 3-inch screws that reach the wall stud behind the frame.
- Do the hinge side too.
- Make sure the deadbolt has at least a 1-inch throw.
- On patio sliders, drop a bar or pin in the track. Sliders lift out far more easily than most people realise.
It takes about ten minutes per door and costs a few dollars. It's the best security value in your entire house, and hardly anyone does it.
2. Close off the easy windows
The windows that get used are the ones nobody can see: ground floor and basement windows behind fences, hedges, or tucked down the side of the house.
- Trim hedges below sill height so the window is visible from the street.
- Add secondary locks or pins to sliding and sash windows.
- Walk your property and look for the climb — anything reachable from a deck rail, flat roof or garbage bin counts as ground floor.
3. Light the approaches
Motion-triggered exterior lighting beats always-on lighting, because change is what draws a neighbour's eye. Constant light just becomes scenery. Cover the front door, the side gate, the back door and the driveway.
4. Make the house look lived in
Predictability is the vulnerability. Mail piling up, a dark house at exactly the same hour every night, bins left out for days — all of it says nobody's home.
Randomised interior lighting genuinely helps here and costs very little. So does a neighbour who takes your bins in.
5. Now add detection
Sensors and cameras come after the physical layer, not before. A camera watching a door that opens with one kick just gives you footage of it happening.
- Door and window contact sensors are the backbone. Cheap, years of battery life, and they tell you the moment something opens rather than after.
- Motion sensors cover the interior: hallways, stairs, the room with the valuables.
- Cameras are for identification, evidence, and checking in remotely.
6. Alarm and response
A loud local siren does real work — it compresses the time available and pulls attention to your house. Whether you want monitored response depends on your street and how far away you usually are.
What's mostly theatre
- Signs and stickers with no system behind them. There's some deterrent value, but anyone who tests it finds out immediately.
- Fake cameras. Recognisable up close, and they give you nothing afterwards.
- Hidden keys. Every spot you can think of has been checked — under the mat, the fake rock, the top of the frame, inside the BBQ.
- One 4K camera covering the whole yard. Wide coverage at distance turns a person into an unidentifiable smear. Two cameras at the right choke points beat one panoramic camera every single time.
Camera placement in one minute
The usual mistake is mounting for coverage instead of identification.
- Point cameras at choke points — the front walk, the gate, the driveway entrance — not at wide open space.
- Mount around 2.5 metres: out of reach, but low enough to get a face rather than the top of a hat.
- Don't point into the sun or a bright sky, or everyone who walks past becomes a silhouette.
- Put one camera on the recorder itself.
Where a real system changes the maths
Individually, none of the above is new. What's changed is that sensors, lights, locks and cameras can now work as one system instead of six gadgets — a door opening at 3am can turn on lights, bump recording quality, and alert you, without anyone deciding to check an app.
That's what we build. NoBreak installs a Brain Box in your home that runs all of it locally: your footage never leaves your property, there's no monthly subscription, and it keeps working when your internet doesn't. If you want the detail on why that last part matters so much, it's in where does your security camera footage actually go.
Your weekend plan
- Long screws in every exterior door strike plate and hinge. Two hours, total.
- Walk the property after dark. Find the unlit approaches, add motion lights.
- Cut back whatever hides a window.
- Contact sensors on every exterior door and reachable window.
- Two cameras on the two most likely approaches.
- Interior lighting on a randomised schedule.
Steps 1-3 close off most of the easy ways in for almost nothing. Steps 4-6 are where a system starts to earn its keep — and if you'd rather not work out the placement yourself, we'll walk your property with you and map it out. No charge, no obligation. We're installing across Toronto and the GTA now.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most effective home security measure? Reinforcing your exterior doors — specifically, swapping strike plate and hinge screws for 3-inch screws that reach the framing. Most forced entries beat the door frame rather than the lock, so this removes the single most common method for a few dollars.
Do security cameras actually prevent break-ins? Visible cameras deter some attempts, but their real value is identifying who was there and letting you check an alert remotely. Cameras don't stop entry — reinforced doors and alarms do more of the preventing, cameras do more of the resolving. You want both.
How do most burglars get in? Through a ground-floor door, usually by force near the lock or by finding it unlocked. Windows are a smaller share and tend to be the ones hidden from the street. Upstairs entry is rare.
Do alarm system signs work? To a degree, and mainly against casual attempts — the deterrent is uncertainty. A sign backed by a real system is worth putting up. A sign used instead of a system fails the moment somebody tests it.
What should I do first to secure my home? Walk your own property as though you were trying to get in, once in daylight and once after dark. Note every unlocked door, hidden window and dark approach. Fix those before you buy anything — that list will be more useful than any generic checklist, including this one.
How many cameras does a house need? Most homes are well covered by three to five, placed at entry points rather than spread out for maximum area. The front door, the back or patio door, and the driveway handle the large majority of real incidents.