What’s the Highest Commercial Security breach in Your Industry?

In the second half of our security alarms breakdown we discuss the options of commercial premises security and commercial crime statistics.

Commercial Security

There are many standards and regulations of security alarms, particularly set by insurance companies.  A burglar alarm is still the number one requirement of the ‘big nine’ insurance companies and it is important you find one that is of the appropriate risk level to your business and on a budget that you are happy with.

Remember, the quality of alarms are paramount – alarms that are prone to failure are not fit for purpose.  If you have an unreliable alarm it can lead to frequent false alarms and in turn your monitoring service may suspend your contract.  The best way to measure competencies across all areas is to go with an NSI Approved company.

Keybury has achieved NSI Gold Standard approval, meaning that its service, products and engineers are of the highest level.  This approval standard is commonly asked for by many insurance companies.

Monitoring of your system may also be a requirement from your insurance company, but there are several options to choose from.

The two main types of response are Keyholders/Guarding Company response or Police Response.

The type of monitoring you require may change the design of your system, so remember to have thought about this when talking to the surveyor.  Police monitored systems are more complex and involve more capital investment.

The types of signalling available are:

Digital Communicator – sends digital signals via phone line fails if phone line is attacked.

RedCare Standard – sends continuous pulse down phone line.  Customer can be informed if phone line is attacked but cannot get a Police Response to a line cut.

RedCare GSM – Same as standard RedCare with the addition of a GSM transmitter – keeps signalling after a line is cut.

DualCom GPRS – Very similar product to RedCare GSM and offers the same advantages.

Here are several grades of DualCom and RedCare – the higher the grade the more secure the connection and the more expensive to employ.  The level of grade is often specified by an insurer.

European standards for intruder alarms have broken down the grades of the systems and signalling as described below:

Grade 1: Inadequate for insurers’ needs.

Grade 2: Suitable for most domestic and low-medium risk commercial premises.

Grade 3: Suitable for most commercial, and some high risk, domestic premises.

Grade 4: Suitable for very high risk premises.

Access control is another form of security which is popular with many commercial premise.  This is not a replacement for physical security, but controls access and people flow.

There may be areas of your business that you wish to restrict to specified personnel.  This type of access control can be stand alone (a single door keypad or swipe), networked (multi door pc controlled networked access control) or biometric (an identification process e.g. fingerprint or retina).

To decide on access control that suits your business, you will need to decide what you want the purpose to be.  For a basic system to keep unauthorised people out, a keypad or tag reader may be all you require.  This also simplifies your business as there is no need to track down lost keys or those from terminated employees and tags and keypads can simply be reprogrammed.

There are many options to tailor access control to your exact needs.  There is a full information resource available to download for free on our resources page.

When looking at the statistics of crimes against commercial premises it is worth taking the time to think about how you can best protect your business from being targeted.

Statistics from the Home Office show that most crimes happen at retail or wholesale businesses, with 55% of these crimes being theft by customers.  Other key statistics show that the highest crime in the hospitality industry is assault and the entertainment sector received almost equal percentages of thefts, assaults and acts of vandalism.

For a more detailed look at last year’s commercial crime figures, take a look at the Home Office breakdown on their website, or their very informative infographic.

Installing physical security measures not only helps protect your business by their primary function, but also deters criminals from considering to target your business.  Call us today to discuss how we can help to protect your premises.