Deter · Detect · Delay · Document — updated for 2026
Start with the opening, not the product.
A front door, a patio slider, a ground-floor window and a rented apartment door each break at a different point, sit under different rules, and deserve a different order of spending. This site walks all 7 of them through the same four layers, in the same order, every time.
Nothing here will tell you that buying something makes a home safe. Across the 7 entry points there are 28 measures that cost nothing at all, and they are printed above the hardware on every page for a reason.
The four layers
Every page on this site is organized the same way, so you can tell what a given piece of hardware is actually for — and what it is not.
Layer 01
Deter
Change what the place looks like to somebody deciding whether to bother.
Layer 02
Detect
Know that something is happening while it is still happening.
Layer 03
Delay
Make the opening take longer and louder to get through than it looks.
Layer 04
Document
Keep a record that still exists when somebody asks for it.
Where a home is actually entered
Seven openings, each with its own weak link, its own constraints and its own sensible order of work.
The Front Door
The jamb, not the lock: on most homes the strike plate is held by screws that stop inside a thin board nailed to the framing behind it.
4 free measures · escape note
The Back Door
Privacy: a back door is usually the only approach to the house where somebody can work unobserved for as long as they like.
4 free measures · escape note
The Sliding Glass Door
The lift path: on a lot of older installations the panel can be raised in its track far enough to come out of it, and no latch prevents that.
4 free measures · escape note
Ground-Floor Windows
Habit: the overwhelming majority of ground-floor window entries are through a window that was left open or unlatched, not one that was forced.
4 free measures · escape note
A Rented Apartment Door
The key list: in a rented apartment you have no idea how many keys were cut before you arrived, and no lock upgrade you can make changes that.
4 free measures · escape note
The Garage Side Door
Specification: the side door is almost always the cheapest door on the property, with the cheapest lock, and on an attached garage it opens into the house.
4 free measures
The Porch and Package Theft
Time: a parcel sitting visible on a step for six hours is the entire problem, and every measure that shortens those six hours beats every measure that records them.
4 free measures
Which layers are open in your home?
Six questions, nothing stored, nothing sent anywhere. Of the 24 actions it can return, 14 cost nothing, and those are always listed first.
What kind of home is it?
Do you own it or rent it?
Which of these does the home have?
Choose as many as apply.
What is already there?
Choose as many as apply, or “Nothing yet”.
Answer all four groups above and the open layers appear here, with the actions that cost nothing listed first.
The rule that outranks the rest
Getting out beats keeping anybody out.
Security hardware works by making an opening harder to use. Escape works by making the same opening easy to use. Every restraining device on this site — interior bolts, window stops, track bars — is described alongside that trade-off, and a bedroom window that needs a key to open from inside is the wrong answer whatever it does for the Delay layer.
The jobs themselves
12 individual jobs. Most add one layer to one kind of opening; 2 add none at all and are the groundwork the others are bolted to. 8 can be done without altering anything permanently.
Delay
Add a Door Reinforcement Lock
It puts a second restraint high on the door, well away from the deadbolt, so that force applied at the lock line runs into a fixing somewhere else. That spreads the load across more of the frame instead of concentrating it on one strike plate. What it does not do is make a door secure, and it does not work at all when nobody is home, because it only engages from inside.
Drilling required · escape warning
Delay
Fit Window Stops Without Blocking Escape
A stop limits how far a sash can travel, so a window can be open for air without being open enough to climb through. That is a genuine Delay layer on a ground floor. It is also, on the wrong window, a way of making a bedroom harder to get out of, which is why the survey below comes before the hardware.
Basic tools · escape warning
Groundwork
Measure Your Door First
Nothing, on its own. It is here because it removes the single most common reason a lock upgrade fails, which is that the lock does not fit the door and goes back in the box. Ten minutes with a tape measure decides whether the next hour is a fitting job or a return.
Basic tools
Delay
Reinforce the Strike Plate
It changes what the bolt is anchored to. A standard strike plate is often held by short screws that reach into the jamb board and no further, and that board is nailed to the framing behind it. Longer screws pass through the board and into the framing, so force at the door meets structural timber rather than trim. It does not make the door strong; it stops one specific cheap failure.
Basic tools
Delay
Fit a Deadbolt Properly
A deadbolt puts a solid piece of metal across the gap between door and frame, which is a real Delay layer when it is fully engaged into framing. Fitted badly — a bolt that only throws halfway, a strike misaligned by a quarter inch — it is a lock that looks locked and behaves like a latch. Most of the value in this job is in the alignment, not the hardware.
Drilling required
Delay
Secure a Sliding Door Track
A sliding door has two weaknesses that have nothing to do with its latch: the panel can be slid, and on many older installations the panel can be lifted out of its track entirely. A track bar addresses the first. Adjusting or fitting anti-lift hardware addresses the second. Neither addresses the glass, which is a fact worth sitting with before spending anything.
Basic tools · escape warning
Detect
Place a Doorbell Camera
It tells you somebody is at the door while they are still at the door, and it keeps a record of the doorstep. It does not stop anybody and it does not slow anybody down. Most of its value in daily life is the first job — knowing who is there before opening — and most of the marketing is about the second.
Drilling required
Deter
Place an Outdoor Camera
An outdoor camera does two things in a specific order. Before anything happens it is visible from the path, which is the Deter part and the only part that operates in advance. Afterwards it produces a record, which is the Document part. It does not intervene in between, and a house with four cameras and a hollow back door is a house that will have excellent footage of its own back door.
Drilling required
Document
Place an Indoor Camera
It records the inside of your home. That is genuinely useful in a narrow set of situations — a hallway that every route through the house passes, a back room with a door onto the garden — and it is a household negotiation in most others. It has no effect on whether anybody gets in.
No tools
Document
Choose Local or Cloud Storage
It decides whether the footage still exists when somebody asks for it. That is the entire Document layer, and it is settled at the moment of purchase rather than afterwards, because a camera that only does cloud will never do local. It has no bearing on whether anything is prevented.
No tools
Groundwork
Protect the Door and the Wall
Nothing to a burglar. This page is here because every other layer on this site is screwed into a door, a frame or a wall, and those degrade. A handle that has been going through the plaster for five years, a door swinging into a radiator, a frame slowly working loose — that is the substrate every lock depends on. Keeping it intact is maintenance, not security, and it is worth ten minutes anyway.
No tools
Delay
Renter Security Without Drilling
It gets you the layers that do not require a screwdriver: a portable brace at the door, clamp-on stops at the windows, a battery doorbell on an existing bracket, and the free measures that most homeowners skip. It does not get you a reinforced strike plate or a new deadbolt, which are the two changes with the most effect. Those need the landlord, and asking is a better use of an afternoon than working around it.
No tools · escape warning
Hardware, where a layer needs it
39 listings across 6 categories, compared on what the listings state rather than on claims about how safe anything is.
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Security Cameras
seeing what happened, and knowing where the footage lives
Deadbolts & Keypad Locks
controlling who has a key, and what happens when the battery dies
Video Doorbells
seeing the doorstep before opening it
Door Reinforcement Locks & Bars
buying time at the door, without blocking the way out
Window Locks & Stops
limiting how far a window opens without trapping anyone
Door Stops & Wall Protectors
protecting the door, the wall and the floor
The rest of it
- Reference — 3 pages everything else leans on, from measurements to what to check about cameras where you live.
- Lock Fit Checker — which shapes of lock can physically go in your door, from four measurements.
- Glossary — 26 terms that turn up on listings, in plain words.