When we work with our commerical customers, we often surprise them with the variety of solutions we provide to help them secure their perimeter. In particular, we place quite a bit of emphasis on creating effective door security. After all, the majority of break-ins involve coming through a door rather than smashing through a window or finding another means of entry. In businesses, in particular, we place a premium on this area of security. Our post on Commercial Door Hardware Options includes a lock-centric approach to commercial door security. Today, we’ll switch our attention to door security for your business beyond locks!
First, we’ll take a look at the obstacles that make business security difficult in the first place. This will provide a good starting place for the specific solutions that we’ll focus on. From there, we’ll look at several types of unique door security. This will start with a section on a couple different camera options to secure your doors. From there, we’ll show you how access control systems can help you control and track access to your building. Finally, we’ll review commercial intercom systems and their role in creating door security for your business. Now, let’s dive in with a look at the unique security threats faced by businesses.
What Makes Securing Businesses Difficult?
In general, businesses often have different security needs when compared to their residential counterparts. For example, businesses have many employees that come and go every day. Furthermore, commercial properties also experience employee turnover. Therefore, businesses must maintain a level of day-to-day security to ensure that employees only enter the building when they should. Moreover, business owners must also make sure that ex-employees do not have access to the building. This factor gets even more important when it comes to those employees who get terminated rather than leaving of their own accord.
Additionally, commercial properties have a way of inviting burglaries. After all, businesses generally have tools, technological equipment, cash, and other valuables inside. They also stand vacant for large periods of time. These two factors make them uniquely vulnerable. Of course, larger businesses experience these threats in an outsized manner. After all, employee security gets tougher as the amount of employees balloons. Furthermore, larger businesses also prove harder to secure while they are vacant simply due to their large number of potential entry points. With this overview in mind, let’s now turn out attention to some specific steps we can take to address door security for your business beyond locks.
Installing surveillance cameras on your property can add treemndous security around your exterior entry points.
Camera Options to Add Door Security Beyond Locks
Over the last decade or so, surveillance systems have boomed in popularity. We highly recommend installing cameras to watch your exterior entry points. We also offer a few different solutions to make this happen. Traditional, hardwired cameras provide you with a dependable system of cameras that store recorded video to an onsite recorder. Additionally, we can hardwire this recorder to your network, which allows you to view your cameras’ live feed at all times. For high-security situations, we urge our customers to go with this type of camera system.
For situations with lesser security needs, or for small businesses with tighter budgets, we also offer wifi-based smart cameras. Installing these cameras does not entail running wire, and does not require a recorder. Instead, smart cameras record motion-based clips to the cloud for future access. Of course, the elimination of wiring and recorders makes the price point on these systems significantly lower than their hardwired counterparts. Unfortunately, smart cameras only work when your wifi is up and running properly. This greatly limits the amount of reliability that you should anticipate from this product. However, for low-security, casual monitoring of your business, this setup certainly beats having no surveillance at all. Now, let’s check out the role of access control in your business’s security plan!
Access Control Systems for Controlling and Tracking Access
Access control systems represent one of the most effective means of controlling and tracking access to your property. This security solution utilizes electronic locking hardware to operate specific doors within a business. Rather than using a key at these doors, users approach a keypad or a credential reader and present either a code or a physical credential such as a card or fob. Users who present an approved credential will then be able to open the door after the reader interacts with the door’s electronics to unlock it. Business owners can allow each credential to open only certain doors at specific times. This proves especially useful when securing larger businesses!
In addition to controlling access to certain doors, access control systems include software that tracks access as well. Every time an employee approaches an access door, it creates a time-stamped event that you can view on a computer by logging in to your access control system. This allows you to easily track employee activity within your business. Furthermore, it allows you to see if anyone tries to enter doors in your business that they should not attempt to enter.
For example, if employees without the necessary permissions attempt to use their credentials to enter your business during a time that you do not want them to do so, the system will both deny access and “flag” this event. At that point, you will know which employee attempted this breach. The security and flexibility offered by these systems makes them an extremely valuable piece of large business security. Let’s take a look at another security option that uses electronic locking hardware!
A video intercom station, such as this one by Aiphone, allows employees to interact with and grant access to a business’s visitors.
Intercom Systems for Visitor Control
As you can see, installing access control gives you a tremendous boost with allowing the right people into your business. However, if you have a location that often hosts non-employees for visits during the day, you’ll want to be able to control access quickly, without having to constantly get the door to let others in. In these cases, we install an intercom system to give you real-time control over your visitors’ access to your building.
Intercom systems can work in conjunction with the same types of electronic hardware utilized by access control systems. With these locks in place, we install stations at the desks of those controlling the door. At the door itself, we install stations to allow for communication back to your employees. If we install an audio intercom, you can have a brief conversation before deciding whether or not to unlock the door. Video intercoms also allow you to see your visitors before making that decision, which can create added security. When used in conjunction with an access control system, intercoms can provide the last piece of the puzzle when it comes to securing your business’s doors during the day!
Adding Door Security Beyond Loks for Your Own Business
We hope that this post helps you see how we can add door security beyond locks on your own commercial property. As always, we encourage you to contact us with any questions this post may raise for you. We will happily answer any and all of your security-related inquiries. Moreover, we also invite you to set up a site survey if you’re interested in taking advantage of the security described in this post. We’ve long offered complimentary site visits and equipment quotes to both new and existing customers alike. During our visit, we can address any security concerns you may have. Additionally, we’ll offer our own input based on our observations of your property. Together, we can create a complete security plan to keep your business — and everyone in it — as safe and secure as possible!