How to Add Protection to Your Storage Unit

Being bur­glar­ized is nev­er expect­ed, but hav­ing your stor­age unit bro­ken into often comes as an even big­ger shock. Most peo­ple think of their stor­age lock­er as a secure, safe place to put the things they no longer have space in the home. They often don’t spend much time con­sid­er­ing how pro­tect­ed the facil­i­ty is noir stor­age unit pro­tec­tion.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, self-stor­age theft is on the rise in North Amer­i­ca, per­haps par­tial­ly thanks to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of tele­vi­sion show about find­ing valu­ables in aban­doned lock­ers.

The best way to ensure the secu­ri­ty of your pos­ses­sions is to choose your stor­age facil­i­ty with great care. Be extreme­ly thor­ough when inspect­ing a facil­i­ty and review all secu­ri­ty fea­tures before book­ing.

Do not hes­i­tate to call the man­ag­er for clar­i­fi­ca­tion if nec­es­sary, and always vis­it the facil­i­ty in per­son before mak­ing any pay­ments.

Here are some things to look for in a good stor­age facil­i­ty:

• Indoor and out­door areas should be well lit at all times
• Video sur­veil­lance sys­tems should be employed and vis­i­ble to help deter poten­tial thefts
• Access con­trols sys­tems which require indi­vid­ual codes, remotes, or secu­ri­ty codes upon entry
• Indi­vid­ual door alarms to alert the oper­a­tor if an unau­tho­rized user enters a unit

Even once you have cho­sen a good facil­i­ty, there are a few ways to increase the lev­el of secu­ri­ty with­in your own unit.

First, be sure to choose a high-qual­i­ty lock. There is no point in spend­ing extra on secu­ri­ty fea­tures if you are going to use a lock that can be eas­i­ly snipped off with a pair of bolt cut­ters. Instead, choose a disc lock or cylin­der lock with a short shack­le. The longer the shack­les, the eas­i­er it is to get tools into the space and cut it off. Aim for one that just fits the latch.

The most com­mon type of stor­age lock­er theft that occurs is a “crash and grab” theft in which the thief will break into sev­er­al units and quick­ly grab what­ev­er they think looks valu­able that they can car­ry away.

Luck­i­ly, this type of thief is fair­ly easy to foil by sim­ply plac­ing all valu­ables towards the back of the unit. If they have to come into your unit and look around for a long time to find any­thing worth­while, they are less like­ly to take any­thing.

For more infor­ma­tion on how to secure your stor­age unit and oth­er prop­er­ties, con­tact the experts at PROTECTION PLUS ® today!