Being broken into is never a pleasant experience, whether it’s your home or your business that is the victim of a burglary. At home, you have to deal with the trauma and psychological issues that come with having your home invaded. When your business is broken into, however, it can literally be a life or death situation for your company as it stands.
Imagine if your business was broken into and set on fire in order to cover the criminal’s tracks. Could you survive without your computers, your backup disks, and the contents of your filing cabinet … all the things that an insurance policy can’t possibly replace? Preventing business break-ins is a matter that deserves serious thought. Here we examine the gold standard in business safety, back to base alarms, as well as 10 other smart business break-in prevention tips.
1. Install security lighting
Thieves depend on the cover of darkness to break into businesses, which are usually located in quite busy areas. Security lighting removes that cover.
2. Tell them what you’ve got
As we talked about in the introduction, prevention of business break-in is far better than getting a call on your back to base alarm, or having to put in an insurance claim. So let thieves know that they’ll be recorded, that your back to base alarm is monitored by a respected company, etc. They may think twice about even getting too close!
3. Limit cash on premises
Thieves usually investigate a premises before breaking in, and if there is significant cash in your registers or petty cash tin, they’ll find out. Get it off the premises regularly.
4. Move ATMs away from doors
This reduces the likelihood of opportunistic break-ins. You should cover ATMs with CCTV cameras, and if you have one on site, a back to base alarm is essential.
5. Leave your cash register open and empty
If you leave it closed and empty, you could well come back to a completely missing register, and the necessity of an insurance claim!
6. Be safe with your safe
Every business needs a safe, and yours should be fireproof and securely anchored to the ground. Change the combination to it every time an employee who had access leaves your company.
7. Record your serial numbers
In the online backup you maintain (one of the most foolproof and easiest ways of protecting business data from fire and theft!), make sure you have a record of the serial numbers of your business equipment. This will help recover it and also catch thieves.
8. Engrave your items
Many police stations offer free engraving at certain times of year. There may be a specific police engraving code for your state – in Queensland, the owner’s first and last initial, followed by birthdate in six number format, followed by a ‘Q’ is the standard code.
9. Vary bank travel times
If you regularly deposit cash in the bank, don’t use marked money bags, and make sure you vary your time and the route you take to get to the bank. If possible, employees should rotate this task.
10. Send it back to base!
Back to base alarms are the gold standard in business security! Choose a very loud one rather than a silent one … the damage a burglar might do to critical business information may not be worth the extra likelihood of catching them.