Data security isn’t the only aspect of safety small businesses should consider. If you own a real-world store or storage facility, you need to keep your inventory safe from intruders. As you’re just starting out and need all the money-saving help you can get, an unexpected and horrifying experience such as being robbed is something you think will never happen to you. It’s better to be safe than sorry, so you should investigate the premises and ensure you have a few desired safety procedures in place. Anything could go wrong in business and much like online viruses, burglars and thieves are always updating their methods, and keeping up with them is really a series of trial and error. Just one break-in could ruin you, and wipe out your inventory stocks for months, potentially costing you hundreds of thousands in losses. There are several countermeasures small businesses can deploy to stop would-be thieves and protect your business and yourself from financial ruin.
Strategic lighting
Many shops on the high street have large glass windows through which, they display their wares. If your business doesn’t have metal shutters, you can feel naked and vulnerable to attack. It’s very easy for a criminal to throw a brick or some kind of hard object through your window and take a few seconds to rob as much as they can from your shop. For a fraction of the price of a metal shutter, you can employ strategic lighting that would make any criminal think twice. Right above your door and window, you could fit, bright LED lights in a pale white, to clearly show, even from afar, who is in front of your business and what they are doing. Being highlighted in such a fashion will make criminal self-conscious and much easier to be spotted. It also aids in helping CCTV, to identify faces and start a search.
Your very own owl
If you don’t want to rely on the cameras of the local authority in the area, a state of the art commercial security system would adequately replace the surveillance role. With your very own system, you can receive a live feed from your business, and see what’s going on from the comfort of your computer at home, or on your smartphone while commuting. You can get real-time alerts and coverage from multiple locations at once. Such systems also have the ability to track internal suspicious acts, such as having user specific codes, to see who might have disabled or removed access from within your business such as an employee. To protect from sabotage, you can save the videos on a cloud storage server, keeping evidence safe from being tampered with.
Hard doors
Criminals will rarely go for the brute force approach and attack the most solid part of a property such as commercial gates or shutters. They will probe a property and find the weakness and exploit it. Doors are inherently the first weak spot; criminal will try to penetrate. Ideally, a commercial door should be constructed of a tough, dense, steel. However, you should fit a metal lining around the framework. A good strong, heavy multi-layer key lock or electromagnetic locking system would add another echelon of security. Remove any glass panels which can be broken into, or fit, industrial strength double-glazing.
