Fortunate Contest

The Schlage Lock Company is well-known in locksmithing circles for manufacturing a lock that’s considerably harder to pick than the standard Yale-type.

The Schlage Manufacturing Company was established in 1920 by Walter Reinhold Schlage, an engineer born in Germany whose mechanical skills were recognized by his father in his childhood. His first patent, in 1909, was for a device that allowed a light switch to be operated by the turn of a door knob. His first door lock patent was gained in 1923. His company is now a subsidiary of the Ingersoll-Rand Company, the portfolio of which includes refrigeration equipment, locks, construction equipment and golf carts.

Schlage Home Alarms now targets the mid-priced residential and commercial markets in Charlotte, holding a 40% share of the market in 1995 and calling itself “The Doberman of Locks”.

The company’s most elaborate offering is currently the Schlage LiNK suite of products, a system to control all the locks and monitoring systems of a house. Using Z-Wave technology, this system allows for remote control through any computer or cell ‘phone with an Internet connection. In this fashion, it is possible for a person to protect their loved ones - and all that valuable copper piping.

Entry is allowed after a four-digit code is entered and lights can be turned on. A text message can be sent when, e.g., children arrive home.

The value of a Schlage home alarm system was recently demonstrated in Gaston County, near Charlotte, NC. A woman was at home when someone started to beat upon the door. She looked through a glass pane to see a person unknown to her. She retired to the bathroom and locked the door.

A louder noise was heard, and the alarm activated, summoning the police. At first the woman was worried the man was in her house, however the police found a broken door but no intruder.

Sergeant JA Leatherwood said, “That alarm is what saved her”. This is the stuff of nightmares and Death Wish movies, but it leaves the value of home alarm systems beyond doubt.

The network administrator an a company ran a normal web activity report of all the enterprise’s users and found that the employees were logging thousands of hits per day on a single site that had nothing to do with the business. What was found was not that the employees were slacking while at work, rather the network was infected with spyware that was tracking the surfers’ activity then sending the information back to the web site for a third part to review and use, all without the employees’ knowledge.

Spyware can and will slow a computer’s bandwidth as well as cause the network to gradual decrease its speed. Many companies are beginning to worry about spyware because it has become so easy to get and install into unknowing users’ computers. Most employees do not know that by clicking on a pop up or web site or by downloading free files such as a screen saver they are letting spyware into the system.

There are numerous programs available to find and delete these malicious spyware applications. Taking preventative measures against spyware will save networks much more time and money than if they wait to remove the spyware after it is already installed and doing its work. Users cannot think they are safe surfing the internet without spyware protection. It is necessary for personal and business network computers to find and use an anti-spyware program that will not only scan for current infection but also protect your computer while you are online.

The above mentioned business used Wavecrest’s Cyfin monitoring program to solve their problems and detect any unusual activity occurring. Wavecrest includes a Cyblock filter so while employees are online the software is protecting against future spyware invasions. For more information on how Wavecrest’s security works visit their site at wavecrest.net.

Mitch Johnson is a successful freelance author that writes regularly for http://www.1st-in-eliminate-spyware.com, a site that focuses exclusively on spyware removal software, as well as tips on how to prevent spyware from popping up on your computer. This site articles on has spyware guard, http://www.1st-in-spyware-detection.com/ as well as spyware scanner, http://www.1st-in-spyware-removal-tools.com/