AVOIDING BREAK-INS AND BEING AN EASY TARGET By Timm Martin, Sentinel Security.
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t has been a crazy and busy time for everyone in security, and new products are coming on to the market daily as a result of the pandemic. There is more and more to learn each day for the Storage industry to be able to adapt as required. Australia and New Zealand are still in varying degrees of lockdown which creates a few problems with staff on-site and off-site. Security companies are receiving quite a few calls coming through for help with CCTV and downloading or viewing footage. These requests stemmed from facilities having more than normal break-ins. As the economic crisis increases so may these incidents, and as an industry, we need to be prepared. These incidents have happened as criminals are looking for easy targets, especially at times when they know fewer staff and customers are on-site. The increased requests have included: l Upgrading their perimeter deterrents l Additional cameras l Larger hard drive recorders l Additional CCTV training l Retro-fitting individual door alarms l Requests to download footage for police
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These are all great deterrents, but there are many things staff can do each day to demonstrate that their facility isn’t an easy target. These start at the sales process as it is essential to be vigilant right from the beginning. Understand the differences between genuine customers and those who are checking out your business because of potential illegal activities. Most legitimate customers have a specific idea of what they need to store and for how long. Those who are checking out your business or looking for an easy target will often be vague and wishy-washy with answers to the most basic of storage questions. Every day there are things that you can do that make your facility one the criminals will avoid. They need not be expensive fixes either, but simple things that are better to know about before an incident.
THINGS LIKE l CCTV – Check that all your cameras are working and recording, the timestamp on your NVR is correct and matches the current time. l Retrieve footage – Do you know how to retrieve footage from your device? If you aren’t sure, reach out to your installer or IT department and learn.
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