Business Security and What You Need to Know

We heard it again yes­ter­day. A com­pa­ny man­ag­er caught by sur­prise that their busi­ness had been hit by a rob­bery. Now the work begins to recov­er from the loss and to look at busi­ness secu­ri­ty. Sad­ly, theft and rob­beries hap­pen all the time…but how often could it have been pre­vent­ed? One of the biggest vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties busi­ness­es face is com­pla­cen­cy.

Too often we hear dec­la­ra­tions of being locat­ed in “safe areas.  An area is safe…until it isn’t. So, what can you do to jump-start your secu­ri­ty in the work­place and com­bat the com­pla­cen­cy? Make secu­ri­ty a sys­tem­at­ic process. And use tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate an auto­mat­ed pro­to­col that just hap­pens auto­mat­i­cal­ly.
Here are a few tips to make your secu­ri­ty sys­tem­at­ic and con­sis­tent.

1. Intro­duce “key con­trol” to your office. Con­vert your entry door lock and inte­ri­or rooms that require high­er secu­ri­ty to locks with “key con­trol”. What do we mean by this? Install locks with keys that can­not be dupli­cat­ed with­out I.D. and autho­riza­tion. This allows you to have account­abil­i­ty and you can con­trol who has keys to which areas. Per­haps only you and a man­ag­er should have access to the serv­er room or a stock room. Etc.
2. For busi­ness­es with larg­er num­bers of users, and extend­ed hours or shifts, it may be worth con­sid­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Access Con­trol for busi­ness secu­ri­ty. This is also com­mon­ly known as a “card access sys­tem” or “key­less entry”. No keys to track, just cards or fobs that can be acti­vat­ed or deac­ti­vat­ed with a few quick steps on a lap­top. You can also con­trol use by author­i­ty lev­el, time of day, the day of the week and by the door. The added beau­ty of Elec­tron­ic Access Con­trol is the record keep­ing. You will have to report with time and date stamp of each user. Some busi­ness­es use it to assist with pay­roll. The abil­i­ty to imme­di­ate­ly deac­ti­vate a lost or stolen card or fob also sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es your secu­ri­ty.
3. You may already have an alarm sys­tem. Are you using it to its max­i­mum poten­tial? Do all users have their own user codes? If yes, this allows you to con­trol who can enter after hours. If an employ­ee is let go, you can erase his access to the alarm with­out affect­ing oth­er users. Is your mon­i­tor­ing sta­tion pro­vid­ing you with month­ly reports on code use by the user with time and date stamps? Or per­haps it’s time to update to “smart mon­i­tor­ing” allow­ing you instant access and report­ing from your mobile phone. Hon­ey­well now has a sys­tem that can send you a pho­to of the per­son arm­ing and dis­arm­ing the sys­tem.
4. The police tell us every day that they love busi­ness­es with cam­era sys­tems. Not only does it help catch bur­glars after the fact. It also deters poten­tial bur­glars and puts vis­i­tors and staff on bet­ter behav­iour as they know their activ­i­ty is being watched and record­ed.
5. Tech­nol­o­gy has also helped cre­ate some great phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty prod­ucts. We now have secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy win­dow films that can make that beau­ti­ful office with great win­dows much more secure. By adding pri­va­cy frost­ing in key areas, to pre­vent thieves from see­ing the inside of spe­cif­ic rooms will deter attempts to enter. Adding the secu­ri­ty film will pre­vent glass shat­ter­ing and the smash and grab we all dread.
These 5 tips are all items that can be intro­duced and will con­tin­ue to work for you 24/7 with min­i­mal, if any, dai­ly effort. But they can great­ly enhance your busi­ness secu­ri­ty and pro­tect your invest­ment from com­pla­cen­cy and bur­glary.

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