Are You Adequately Protected?

You’ve worked hard for what you’ve got. You look around and you’re rightly proud of what you’ve achieved. A luxury home, a nice car, maybe even a yacht, and a collection of expensive art - these are the fruits of your labors.

The unfortunate reality is that there’s a strong chance that someone else is also looking and is planning to take it away from you.

A trawl through the internet reveals that high-profile people and wealthy individuals continue to be targeted by organised criminal gangs, with many targeted in their family homes.

One such example was Tamara Ecclestone, daughter of former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone. She was away on a family holiday when her Kensington mansion was ransacked and relieved of £25 million of cash and jewelery in what is believed to have been Britain’s biggest ever burglary. The incident left Ms Ecclestone scared and “obsessing over security”.

In a victim impact statement, Ms Ecclestone said: “It’s been really awful. I’m so scared, I will not leave my daughter alone in the house at night because I just feel like the people I am meant to trust; I don’t. I’m not sure that I can trust anyone; I have just been so scared.

As distressing as this may have been, Ms Ecclestone was fortunate that the family were overseas when the burglars struck - British Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish wasn’t so lucky. Cavendish, 36, was assaulted and his wife was threatened in front of their children, who were in the house when intruders broke into their home during the early hours of the morning. None one of the family were seriously hurt but Cavendish said the incident had left his family feeling ‘extremely distressed’.

The celebrity status of the victims makes for interesting reading, but with over 267,000 burglaries reported in the UK throughout last year, thousands of others won’t make the headlines. Moreover, data suggests that at least 95% of burglaries committed within the UK go unsolved.

The statistics demonstrate that incidents of this nature occur with alarming regularity, yet security still tends to be low on many peoples’ priorities. Some continue to adopt a somewhat flippant approach to their security with a firmly entrenched mindset that ‘it’ll never happen to me’.

There may be a variety of reasons for justifying such a casual approach, but is minimising the investment in security a risk worth taking? One wonders if Mark Cavendish had the benefit of hindsight prior to his family’s ordeal; whether he would have increased his expenditure on security?

The sad reality is that the psychological impact of burglary, particularly on children, usually means that victims are left so traumatised that they then spare no expense in upgrading their security to prevent such an incident from ever happening again. However, it’s quite often the case that people tend to invest heavily in security after an incident when earlier investment may have prevented the incident and spared the psychological trauma inflicted on loved ones.

Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with many turning to the internet to plan their crimes. With the availability of personal data so easy to obtain coupled with the naivety of many social media posts, the internet has helped to make criminal activity easier while significantly reducing the chances of them from getting caught.

When it comes to minimising the risk of being a victim of attack, there is a plethora of information available online or in books offering sound advice, but the first step should be to adopt a security mindset.

Ignorance is no excuse, so learn how to make your life more secure and protect your family. Educate yourself on burglar tactics and put measures in place to reduce the risk of attack; even better is to obtain advice from a professional security consultant.

Our busy lives means that security often gets overlooked. Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated, so whether physical or online, the threat is constantly changing. Criminals prefer and will always select an easy target so don’t make their life easier.

You have a duty of care to protect your loved ones so don’t take any chances; it doesn’t have to impinge on your daily life and it doesn’t have to break the bank. Adopt a security mindset, hire a security consultant - and remember that prevention is always better than cure.