Recession-related crimes are on the rise and landlords, property owners and tenants need to watch out, especially as more properties are being vacated and more people are out of work.
Jerry Jariwalla, RealBusiness.co.uk
A larger portion of our call outs have been related to recession-related crime recently. Examples of our recent jobs include opportunist as well as planned break-ins, theft of data and theft of equipment.
Traditionally there has been difficulty in articulating ROI on security expenditures but the fact remains that is security is more important than ever, and a company’s information and physical assets are perhaps even more vulnerable than they ever were before. This is especially the case in hard-hit industries such as financial services and retail.
Nine security checks to protect your business
1) Do your main front doors have secure overnight dead locks (that are BS3621-approved)? Many business owners don’t realise that most access control systems are not sufficient to keep people out. Multi-occupancy buildings can’t have key-operated deadlocks as they present fire risks.
2) Install locks with restricted keys. If you give a copyable key to an employee, they could potentially copy it and then sell the key to your property to the highest bidder, or help themselves at a later stage. We’ve installed locks with special keys for several high profile retailers and they’ve proven to be hugely successful. In some cases, we’ve saved clients in excess of £20k per annum and reduced theft and operational costs.
3) Don’t forget about your windows. To meet insurance standards, ground floor windows and other accessible windows should have key-operated bolts.
4) Fit thumbturn locks to rear fire exit doors. Key operated locks are illegal in communal buildings and panic bars alone are not sufficient. What most people don’t realise is that there are only certain locks that you can put on a fire exit.
