Tips To Secure Your Business Premise Over The Holidays

The holidays are known as the happiest time of the year. However, crimes such as theft and property damage spike during the holiday season. In school holidays, summer holidays and over Christmas, potential thieves will know your building or site is empty and may, unfortunately, try to take advantage.

There are still some very effective and easy steps to take in order to help keep your business safe. Here are our top tips to securing your commercial property and premise over the holiday break.

Remove or Secure Any Valuables

An obvious but easily forgotten tip! For some businesses, having their doors closed over the holidays means an even busier and stressful time making sure everything is done on time.
Sometimes this means forgetting to put expensive equipment or valuables away or locking them in a safe secured room.

If cash is kept within the business premise, keep it to a minimum, and ensure your employees are trained in how to handle cash sensibly. Also make sure any keys are out of sight, especially if the premises has vehicles around.

Install Solar Security Cameras

Research shows that intruders are often deterred by surveillance measures such as outdoor security cameras. A surveillance camera protects business premises by being easily spotted from a distance and deterring crime, or recording footage of any crimes that do occur. Making sure you have a properly working outdoor solar security camera that can monitor the outside of your business as well as record incidents can increase the safety of your business over the quiet holiday period.

Quality Locks on Doors & Windows

High quality locks do make a difference in protecting your commercial property. Make sure all windows and doors include strong locks that can withstand a degree of tampering. Lock all of your business entrances and windows when you leave for the holiday break, as well as individual offices that may contain valuable items or documents.

Lighting & Surveillance

Being in the spotlight draws a lot of attention, and that’s particularly true for criminals. Criminals will do anything they can to hide in the dark and conceal themselves as much as possible before they commit burglary or vandalism on a premise. This is where proper lighting and surveillance in the area make a difference. Lighting and CCTV systems are great visible deterrents and if a crime were to occur, the footage can help you report the issue to the police.

Review Access Control System

Securing your business against anyone except authorised personnel is extremely important. This gives you complete control over who enters the building, protecting both your employees and your valuable items on site. It’s important to review all codes and confirm which employees have access to certain areas.

An access control system can be hugely beneficial for all businesses if you’re going on holiday as it means the necessary personnel and employees can still access your building as and when required.

Check to make sure that your access system, whether it’s swipe cards, proximity fobs or cards, tokens, digital keypads or fingerprint readers, is accessible to the right personnel or employee over the holiday period should they need to enter the premises when offices are empty.

Set Burglar Alarm System

If you have a burglar alarm in place then it’s important that you check your settings on both the system and what it’s connected to (e.g your mobile device) and that it’s working properly. Give it a test run to ensure that it’s in full working order before leaving your business for a long period of time.

If you have a company that you’ve hired for your monitoring and alarm system, let them know when the business is closed so that they can watch for unusual activity. Also, review your emergency call list, and update it if necessary. If the alarm does sound, the alarm company will need to have the right contact information on who to contact first in emergency situations.

Business owners tend to forget security during the last few days before they go on holiday. By implementing these security tips and having proper CCTV or solar security cameras in place, you can prevent any unexpected surprises upon your return.

Whether you’ll be closing for a week’s vacation or a longer seasonal shutdown, be sure to have the right security measures in place to keep your business safe and feel confident that your holiday will be a happy one!