When you're choosing a new alarm system for your home, you don't just necessarily get basic protection against intruders. Some systems have additional features that increase your security if someone tries to break into your home.

For example, you may come across systems that offer crash and smash protection. What is crash and smash? How does this feature work?

What Is Crash and Smash?

Home alarms usually give you a short period of grace before they go off when you enter your home. You get a few seconds to get in and enter your code or make an app confirmation to disarm the alarm. While this makes things easier for you, it can also make things easier for burglars. They can use this short time to break through your door quickly (the crash) and then break the alarm's control panel (the smash).

If they act quickly enough, burglars can break the system before it can register an intrusion. If the panel is destroyed early enough, it won't hit reach its alert mode and can't do its job. The system won't tell your monitoring company or you that someone has broken in.

How Do Crash and Smash Features Work

If you buy an alarm system that has a crash and smash feature, then your alarm can no longer be breached in this way. Your system monitors what happens to your controls remotely rather than focusing all responses through a control panel. This feature is designed to factor a crash and smash into an alarm's database of potential problems. So, once your door is opened, the alarm becomes alert and waits to see what happens.

If the panel is smashed, its remote system may simply continue to wait for the right code to be entered. It will then set off the alarm when it isn't. Alternatively, the system may register that it has gone off-line because the controls have been destroyed. Rather than assume a fault, the system turns off-line status into an emergency alert that there may have been a crash and smash attack.

If your alarm is monitored, the monitoring company will know that there may be an intruder on the premises and can take immediate action. Also, if you monitor your system via an app, then you can get the alert.

To find out more about crash and smash and other alarm features that may be good to have, talk to your security systems supplier.