Is your home safe? With rising crime rates in neighbourhoods, you better make sure that it is.

The good news is, advances in "smart" home security technology have helped make life easier and safer for homeowners.

"Present smart home solutions take advantage of available technology such as biometrics, wireless, touch-screen panels and broadband to enable integrated protection for homeowners and their properties. These include security systems, home automation, surveillance, home networking, communications and audio-visual," says MH Smart Home Sdn Bhd's sales and marketing manager Lim Meng Hee.

"Even though all these systems are mutually independent, they can be integrated and operated by even a person who does not know anything about IT."

For instance, the security system will be able to manage all lighting in the home in the event of an alarm being triggered, or closed-circuit TV content can be viewed from remote locations through Internet or Wi-Fi connections.

Besides that, the entire smart home system can be controlled using computers. The system can even portray routine activities of people at home such as switching on/off the lights or TV at a certain time of the day.

Lim says demand for integrated smart home solutions is good, especially among high-end property owners. Such solutions cost between $4,200 and $12,600.

To provide the best technology possible for smart homes, MH Smart Home has been appointed by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission as digital home task force member alongside players such as TM Net, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft to help develop a blueprint to expand the digital smart home and related industries in the country.