You’ve taken the sensible precaution of ensuring that your home and its contents are adequately protected by an appropriate level of home insurance, but has that lulled you into a false sense of security?

Take a closer look at your policy and you are likely to find that you share a responsibility for ensuring that every reasonable precaution is taken to mitigate the risks of loss or damage – and if you fail to do so, it might prejudice any claim you subsequently make.

By the same token, the more you do to safeguard your home, the greater your chances of securing cheaper cover. Improved home security is that much easier to achieve thanks to the development of a number of helpful clever apps for your smartphone or computer:

Wireless burglar alarms

• once upon a time, setting up a comprehensive burglar alarm system is likely to have taken a long time and involved considerable expense;
• an article in Ideal Home magazine on the 18th of March 2019, features the Smart Living home security systems developed by long-established locksmiths Yale;
• the reviewers took just an hour to install the complete wirelessly connected smart hub, motion-activated camera, motion detector, siren (and additional dummy siren box), door and window magnetic contacts and keypad;
• the hub itself has a 72-hour battery back-up, but the remaining wireless devices have batteries which are said to last for up to two years;

Film it

• modern video cameras can keep a constant watch on your home with real-time views of exactly what’s going on through a video monitor accessible from your smartphone, tablet or computer;
• Motorola’s FOCUS73 Wi-Fi connects via a secure Hubble app to stream 720p HD video and give you immediate notification of motion detection;

Lock it

• locks on your doors and windows are fairly standard fare, of course, but they have also become far more sophisticated thanks to some clever technology;
• an affordable upgrade to your home security may be made by fitting a Defender Keypad Alarm to any door or window, including your garage or garden shed;
• set it using a 4-digit code into the keypad and the magnetic contact alarm alerts you – with a 130dBs siren – whenever the door or window is opened or if the shock sensor on the device is activated;

Padlock it

• padlocks have served as invaluable security tools for many years – you might be using one on your garden shed right now;
• but these days they also come with integral alarms which are set off whenever they are tampered with – or used as a normal padlock, without the alarm, by simply reversing the setting;
• Target Locks produce a number of such padlocks with alarms, with the TL021-LS Long Shackle Alarmed Padlock as a prime example;

Watch it

you don’t want to let people know that you might be home by leaving the TV on all the time when you’re away on holiday – but you can give every impression of that being the case with a fake but clever TV simulator from computer manufacturer Avantek;

set the timer and the LED display switches on to mimic the changes in colour, lighting and scene changes you’d get from a 42-inch HD TV, fading in and out and simulating on-screen motion.

Thanks to modern, wireless technology and other developments on established themes, safeguarding your home has become so much easier. Make the most of it to enhance the protection offered by your home insurance.