As a small business, you need to make sure you’re doing everything in your power to protect your premises, the assets within it, and your staff/clients, too. It’s not easy starting a business and getting it into a position where it can grow, so the last thing you want is for all your hard work to be compromised as a result of poor security, especially when you consider the safety implications and human cost security breaches can have.
To help you keep your small business premises safe and secure, here are our three top tips and methods for ensuring the safety of a business building and everything/everyone inside it.
1. Security cameras
Our first suggestion is arguably the most obvious, but it’s one that a lot of small businesses still don’t implement – and if they do, it’s usually done to meet the bare minimum standard. Security cameras are the very first thing you need to be looking at in order to secure your property, but don’t make the mistake of buying one cheap one and placing it above your front entrance.
We would recommend buying multiple high quality cameras and placing them in several locations, including above each entry/exit door, in main areas like the reception and till point (if you have one), and looking out onto the car park. If you have a warehouse, area, it’s worth putting security cameras in there, too.
You don’t need to spend an arm and a leg, but make sure you buy decent cameras that produce high quality images, instantly save footage, and that can adapt to night time recording. There’s no point having a camera that records poor quality images, because if something does happen, it will be almost impossible to use them for identification purposes.
An effective, good quality camera in a well-placed position should deter criminals in the first instance, with some reports estimating by up to 50%.
2. Secure sensitive information
Traditional thieves used to target businesses for their materialistic goods such as computers and phones so they could sell them on and make money, but these types of items are now readily available for a relatively low price to consumers, so they’re less valuable.
Instead, data and information are increasingly the main targets for criminals. With this in mind, make sure you’re taking the relevant steps to protect important information. Regularly update passwords to something that won’t be guessable, shred important documents that you no longer need, and implement double locking on office doors that contain information – especially where client and/or employee personal data is stores.
3. Hire security personnel
Depending on the scale of your small business, you may want to hire security personnel. This could be in the form of security guards, night time patrols, or even car park enforcement. Whilst you might not feel like the threat to your actual indoor premises is large enough to warrant a security guard, there are other ways you can keep your premises secure from the outside. For example, in the UK car park management is commonly used to prevent people congregating outside your building who shouldn’t be there.
It might be that you only hire security on certain days of the week. For example, if you’re an independent bar, it might be worth getting door personnel in on Friday and Saturday nights, but they might not be necessary at 10am on a Tuesday.
Summary
The way you protect your business will be largely dependent on the type of business you are and what you’re looking to protect, but we hope you’ve found these three tips helpful.
Also Read: Strategies for Struggling Businesses Emerging from the Pandemic
