Compliance & buying guides
Commercial security guides
Practical references for the people who actually have to specify, buy and answer for a commercial security system — written from the installer’s side, sourced, and dated. No product catalogues.
Start here
Section 889 and NDAA compliance
The most consequential thing a commercial buyer can get wrong is procurement eligibility, because it disqualifies a system before anyone evaluates it. Our fullest guide covers it end to end: NDAA compliant security cameras and Section 889.
It explains what the statute actually prohibits, the Part A and Part B distinction that decides whether the law reaches your own building or only what you sell to the government, the five entities named in the text, why the brand printed on a camera does not tell you who produced it, and how Trade Agreements Act compliance is a separate test that can return a different answer. Every brand-specific statement in it carries the date it was verified, because compliance status changes.
It is the reference behind our work for government and defense facilities, and it is written to be useful whether or not you ever call us.
Decision guides
Before you buy
The questions that decide a commercial system, answered without a sales position. We install both sides of every comparison on this list, and the cost guide deliberately contains no prices.
The variables that actually decide your number — positions and purpose, cable pathways, retrofit versus new build, retention, licensing and door count — and why an accurate figure comes from a survey rather than a phone call. Contains no prices, deliberately.
Retention, what happens to recording in an outage, the capital-versus-subscription cost shape, who administers the system, and the procurement rules that sometimes settle it before any of that. We install both.
What each option actually does, what SDPD dispatch data shows about unverified alarm response, and why the useful question is verified against unverified rather than monitored against unmonitored.
Statistics
Sourced data resources
Crime and loss figures for San Diego and nationally, rebuilt from primary sources. Every number carries the source, the period it covers, whether it is a count or an estimate, and the date we retrieved it.
San Diego commercial burglary statistics
Commercial versus residential burglary recorded by SDPD, 2020 to 2025, the district ranking, clearance rates, and the national and California context — every figure sourced and dated.
False alarm statistics for San Diego
How many burglary alarm calls SDPD is dispatched to each year, how few produce a report or an arrest, and what the Department of Justice found nationally.
Retail shrink statistics
What the National Retail Federation actually publishes on shrink and retail theft, what it stopped publishing after fiscal 2022, and the San Diego recorded-shoplifting series.
managed residential property
Guides we are writing next
Listed here so you know what is coming, and not linked because they are not written yet. We would rather show you an honest index than a set of links that go nowhere.
Listed here so you know what is coming, and not linked because they are not written yet. We would rather show you an honest index than a set of links that go nowhere.
How many security cameras does my business need?
Why camera count is the least useful number about a system, and what to scope against instead — positions, sightlines and what each view has to prove.
California security camera laws for commercial property
Where cameras may point on commercial properties, and how privacy expectations shape a coverage plan.
California audio recording law and CCTV
Why audio sits under different rules from video, what Penal Code § 632 turns on, and why we scope camera audio conservatively by default.
The San Diego alarm permit
SDPD Form 1067, when a permit is required before a system is monitored, and the renewal that quietly lapses.
Cannabis dispensary camera requirements in California
What the state regulations require a licensed premises to record, and where operators most often fall short at inspection.
Meanwhile
Where the detail already lives
Much of what these guides will cover is already written into the pages it applies to, because that is where a buyer tends to look for it. The commercial services pages carry the technical detail for each discipline — how a system is surveyed, what a design has to account for, and what is handed over at the end. The industries pages carry the same material arranged by the problem a particular kind of building has.
Two sections sit alongside this one and are easy to miss. The blog covers the operational layer these guides do not: retention, interoperability, the PoE power budget, recorders and camera selection. And resources holds the downloadable versions of this material as PDFs, including a Section 889 checklist and a summary of the California cannabis camera requirements. They are free and there is no form in front of them. The interactive versions of the same material are under tools, including a Section 889 checker that walks the Part A and Part B distinction against your own contracting position.
If you are trying to answer a specific question and cannot find it, call and ask. We would rather give you a straight answer than have you guess from a page that was not written for your situation.