As a business owner, you likely have about a hundred things on your mind at one time. Thus, security tends to fall to the wayside until something happens—someone breaks into your neighbor’s business down the street, or you nearly get assaulted in the parking lot, or you find yourself questioning how vulnerable your property actually is.
The problem with waiting for something to go wrong is that it becomes expensive fast. Not only what you might have to pay to recoup losses but also how expensive it is to play catch up instead of getting it right from day one. Security measures shouldn’t break the bank but should address legitimate vulnerabilities instead of merely making you feel secure.
Take Action Before It’s Too Late
Security is often thought of backwards by a majority of business owners. For many, it’s about the dramatic—high-tech alarm systems, a million cameras, maybe even a security guard. While all of those are important (some more than others), they are not where most businesses should start.
Instead, most businesses should first implement physical barriers. Before any electronic barriers go off, before anyone is called into action, you want to make gaining entry legitimately challenging. Of course, when a determined criminal wants to break into something, they will eventually get it done with time on their hands. But not all criminals are that determined or hardworking. They prefer the easy way—and if you’ve implemented strong perimeter security, you’ve already moved into another category.
The difference maker is proper commercial fencing. The right fencing will not only denote your property line, but it will create a psychological and physical deterrent to proper engagement with your space. When installed with the right height and material for your job, the fence prevents trespassing entirely, and if someone really wants to gain entry, it’s visible and time-consuming.
Businesses that fail to take this step or do it cheaply end up regretting it later on. You could have the best camera system in the world, but if someone can take five steps onto your property without anyone seeing them do it, all you will have is footage of a crime in action.
Lights That Actually Work
One thing that people don’t realize until it’s too late is that a majority of commercial properties are woefully underlit. Sure, the parking lot might have a few lights in it, and maybe there are some lights near the main entrance but after sunset, a lot of the property goes dark.
Criminals love darkness and for good reason. Good lighting not only allows you to see what’s going on around you, but it changes behavior. People act differently when they think that they can be seen. This includes potential troublemakers, but also your employees who think it’s okay to cut through an area because they think no one is watching when in reality, they are caught on camera without even realizing it.
Motion sensors work well for certain areas; uniform lighting works better in high-risk areas. There should be enough light that someone found on any part of your property would feel exposed. This doesn’t mean flood the place with stadium lighting, but instead eliminate dark corners and blinds spots where people can work unseen.
The energy costs associated with extensive lighting frighten some owners away. However, with LED technology, it’s hard to justify any concern anymore. Where before those lights would be too expensive to keep running all night long, now it costs less to keep the lights on then it does for an office fueled by coffee during the day.
Cameras With Intention
Security cameras are low-hanging fruit that many business owners can justify adding to their security measures (or at least should). However, there’s a difference between effective camera systems and good intention camera systems.
For example, cheap dome cameras from big box stores may make you feel safe, but they’re not catching anything worthwhile. In fact, resolution trumps quantity any day of the week. One quality camera taking up a desired area beats five grainy ones that can barely identify a passerby. There should be enough pixels to catch a face with great clarity and license plate numbers. 4K cameras aren’t even that much more expensive than subpar camera systems—and they’re virtually worthless from long distances through any other crystal-clear quality camera.
Placement makes cameras worthwhile or simply decoration. What do you want monitored? Entry points? Cash handling? Inventory storage? Vehicle access? Place the camera where decisions are made and valuables move. Avoid placing cameras where a camera might catch only a distant foot disappearing into your storage room after your back has turned three times.
Now that cloud storage is relatively inexpensive, it makes sense to have video footage readily available for review. The old style of recorded tapes or digital hard drives over-written every few days meant that useful footage was often deleted before anyone had time to seek it out.
Access Control That Makes Sense
Not every business needs extensive access control; however, most need more access control than just keys. The problem with keys is that unless you have a strict policy about distributing them, you truly have no idea who has access when—and if they should. Keys get duplicated; keys get lost; keys get “borrowed” and returned three weeks later after subsequent use; keys get handed off quietly when one employee gets mad at another.
Minimal electronic access systems need not be complicated and can be relatively inexpensive nowadays. Even simple keypad entry or card readers provide two things that keys never can—an audit trail of who went where and when, and immediate revocation of access without changing locks.
For organizations that hire multiple employees and/or require differing access to deliveries during off-hours, this becomes essential. You want to know if your cleaning crew came at 11pm last night because they told you they’d be there at 3pm yesterday (when you subsequently rejected delivery due to lack of trust). Therefore, this audit trail becomes more important than people realize—if something’s missing or something’s broken during a window of access, knowing who was there helps identify issues much faster than eliminating suspects one by one.
Safe Storage for What Matters Most
Most businesses have something worth valuable—inventory, equipment, cash on hand (unlikely), sensitive documents—and hoping that they’ll remain safe inside your building without any form of security upgrade is not the answer.
Quality safes cost less than what most businesses pay in office furniture purchase alone on top of ensuring peace of mind due to valuables worth far more than many businesses pay for their office aesthetic alone; fire rated safes handle documents and electronics while burglary rated can withstand incredible force against break-in attempts without breaching; of course getting both rated features will cost more but it’s worth it for truly critical items.
But installation is critical as well—an unsecured safe gets carried away instead of broken into; bolt it down; put it in an area that’s not immediately visible to windows or main doors; don’t advise everyone where the safe is located either—it cheapens its value.
Bringing It All Together
Security works best as a system instead of disparate measures—as such, physical barriers slow access down. Lighting prevents them from hiding out anywhere undetected. Cameras capture what’s happened; access control features indicate what’s going on; safe storage options prevent disasters for the most valuable items if everything else fails.
You don’t need everything immediately; however, you should have a plan for building toward comprehensive coverage over time by starting with the basics that solve immediate vulnerabilities and then layering on additions as budget allows it. Those who get it right don’t see security as an expense; they see it as the cost of doing business without constantly fighting against things that could have been avoided based upon educated decisions made first.
Most security systems can pay for themselves through just one or two instances that would have cost much more had they needed to be dealt with retrospectively—but that’s not including the value of things that never happened because your business stopped looking like an easy target in the first place without these holes exposed.
