• Insite Security

  330 Seventh Ave., nr. 29th St., Ste. 900 212-362-5700; insitesecurity.com

  Mom-and-pop security operations will sell you an alarm that rings when your door is forced in. Insite Security, run by former Secret Service agent Christopher Falkenberg, goes way, way beyond that, creating a full-on plan to ensure a safe home life. (Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren have hired him.) Insite’s work starts with a broad assessment, beginning with the design of an alarm system linked to monitoring stations (receiving and transmitting alarms to the police), locks, and strengthened windows; a basic setup like that might fall in the $10,000 range. For much more, Falkenberg will study your home’s emergency preparedness—making plans for blackouts and unrest, and even kidnapping and other threats— and procedures for safety when you travel. Falkenberg and his 25- member team do everything in-house, so there’s no outsourcing that might compromise their work. He takes on a lot of swank apartments, but New York townhouses, he says, are a third of his business: “They are vulnerable locations—roof exposure, connecting backyards, secluded back doors.” Yes, he sounds a little paranoid. That’s the whole point.

From the 2013 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine