pests on the prowl
March 13, 2012 8:16 AM   Subscribe

My small manufacturing company has suffered several security problems in the past few weeks, including one break in. How can we upgrade our security posture and harden our defenses?

I work for a small company that is manufacturing recreational products. As such, we have a fair amount of attractive, shiny consumer goods around our factory, plus the usual amount of other stuff like computers and personal effects. Our building is an older construction with a variety of ways to get inside if you are a determined smash and grab burglar. We have audio and door sensors monitored by an alarm company. The audio sensors did nothing during a recent break in. The alarm was only triggered by the burglars exiting the building. They gained entrance on the roof, breaking a window to enter, then having the run of the place until they left.
I'm concerned we may be getting a rep as an easy mark amongst the local riff raff.
We are investigating a local security company that is probably more hip to current technology than the standard alarm company we've been using.
What resources can we access online that would help us to understand how to think about this, what we can and cannot do legally to protect ourselves from predators, how we can physically harden our locale and what security systems might be available to us that we could run to protect our factory from intruders and predators. I'm thinking, for example, of software we could run to monitor webcams on PC's to send out notifications if they sense movement at night.
We have a limited budget to do this, perhaps more than most companies of our size, so finding the smart, yet effective way is paramount.
If we engage the local security company, what questions and answers should we be asking them to get the results we need?
Any information would be useful, particularly from people in similar circumstances who have solved or managed this problem effectively.
posted by diode to Technology (9 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Don't make the mistake of going with solutions that are "more hip to current technology." You need physical barriers as well as technological ones. The goal should not be to alert police in a break in or scare off burglars, but rather to make your building a poor target in the first place. Your skylights should be barred. Your windows that to not provide fire exit should be barred. Your doors and the frames they sit in should be steel. Outdoor motion sensing floodlights may or may not be an additional deterrent depending on your location. Your local police department probably has a community liaison officer who will be surprisingly un-useless at this kind of assessment.

Once all of that is done, one of the very first things I would do is install indoor wireless motion sensors and rig them to turn the internal lights on after hours when motion larger than a rat is detected. They can also (and normally do) set off an alarm, but turning on the lights is a very, very useful post-entry deterrent.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:31 AM on March 13, 2012


Costco of all places has very affordable HD wireless cameras sending signals to a DVR. As you mentioned, use one of your computers to manage the feed. This has been successful for a local condo in our area that had problems with break-in, tagging and of all things, people driving into the local bus stop, completely destroying the shelter, and then driving off.

The lesson they learned was to not only monitor the areas where they could break in, but monitor other areas where they may park a car, or gather to case the joint.
posted by lstanley at 9:49 AM on March 13, 2012


You may want to be discreet when setting up new video monitoring. Don't assume that this is the work of the local riffraff; it could be an inside job.
posted by ApathyGirl at 10:48 AM on March 13, 2012


Strongly seconding DarlingBri. You don't want high-tech to combat "smash and grab", they're using screwdrivers and prybars and sledgehammers. You want physical barriers. You want noise & lights that are more likely to get the attention of any cops in the area or anyone in eyesight or earshot who might call the cops. You want to prevent them getting in in the first place. If still manage to get in, you want them unable to get out before the cops arrive. If they manage to get out, you want them unable to get out with anything valuable, either because they can't physically manage it or because they're so freaked out by the alarm and lights that they just want to get the hell out ASAP.

We had a couple of smash-and-grab break-ins and DarlingBri's deterrents are exactly what the cops and our alarm company suggested. We implemented all of them and (knock wood) we've been good since then.

One thing we also did is add a secondary steel-grate door inside our regular doors. The secondary doors only get closed and locked at night when we leave. The idea is that the criminals pry open the outside door, which sets off a really loud alarm, and see that they have another door they have to get through, and they say, "Fuck it, too much trouble, we're outta here."
posted by soundguy99 at 5:10 PM on March 13, 2012


I'm thinking, for example, of software we could run to monitor webcams on PC's to send out notifications if they sense movement at night.

A lot of webcams have quite poor low light performance - I've set webcams to video all night and just got a bunch of black once the lights are out.

If we engage the local security company, what questions and answers should we be asking them to get the results we need?

We had a monitored alarm system get triggered in work a few weeks back. The monitoring company waited 30 minutes before calling someone from the company, and said their nearest car was an hour away, and by the time it got there employees would have started arriving, so they were going to do nothing.

Needless to say, some of us questioned the value of this service. I would suggest you ask them how they respond to alarms.

Any information would be useful, particularly from people in similar circumstances who have solved or managed this problem effectively.

Most factories I've toured have had tall, ugly metal fences and all doors externally padlocked when the place is closed (so a burglar can't exit through them). Some places also have bars on ground floor windows, and/or have a lockable store room for those valuable items/tools that aren't too heavy to move. PCs are usually cheap desktops with little black-market value, and sometimes chained to desks as well.
posted by Mike1024 at 5:47 PM on March 13, 2012


Best answer: Every factory I've worked in has faced this problem at some time. Making the premises harder to enter and exit when it's locked is the most effective way you can prevent this, because the smash-and-grab type offenders are looking for soft targets they can get into and out of quickly. Monitored alarms aren't much use for this, as every crim worth his or her salt knows that there will be enough time to get in, grab what they want and get away before any response arrives, unless they are unlucky enough to trigger an alarm when a mobile patrol is nearby. Likewise mobile patrols - it doesn't take long to figure out how far apart the visits are and it's easy to be in and out between visits.

While it doesn't stop break-ins, the idea of using motion-activated cameras combined with having the same sensors turn the lights on might be worth considering. This will only have effect, though, if the fact that the cameras are there is well signposted on the outside of the building.

The best solution, though, is to 'harden' the premises. You don't mention what sort of construction the building is, but generally make sure that every window is barred (not just those on the ground floor), every external door is either steel or steel-faced and has an additional barred gate (putting it on the inside is a great idea) and good quality locks. Think about how easy it is to gain access through walls - if the building is clad in steel panelling, can they just unscrew a few screws and pull a panel aside? These are things you can do to stop people getting in, as opposed to catching them after the fact.

Have you considered a dog? The only time we have absolutely stopped burglaries from factories is when a dog or dogs were on the premises when it's closed. Only once did we have someone manage to get into the property (ie over the fence) and we found him shivering with cold and fear on top of the roof of the office with the dog waiting patiently below him - he'd been there all night. Better if you have an apprentice to clean up the dog shit every morning , though ;-)
posted by dg at 9:27 PM on March 13, 2012


Response by poster: Thanks for the tips. There is no easy tech solution short of defending our outer ramparts first and making it very costly to gain entrance. Dog sounds like a good solution too though I'm not sure how a company manages a guard pet around the clock.
posted by diode at 8:12 AM on March 14, 2012


I don't know where you are, but here in Northern Ohio (and I would guess in other metropolitan areas) you can contract with a "guard dog rental" service. The company drops them off at night and picks them up in the morning. I have no idea what it costs, as we didn't even consider it - we need access 24/7/365.

The cops also suggested owning a dog, but we rejected that for two reasons: 1) apparently it would make our liability insurance rocket sky-high and 2) while we're not really open to the public, we do have enough "random strangers" stopping by that it would have been really really difficult to train a dog to be aggressive enough to deter criminals while being friendly enough to deal with semi-regular visits from various part-time employees or clients or whoever.

I suppose just the noise of the dog barking could act as a deterrent, but we did have a "shop dog" several years ago, and it was kind of a hassle. I mean, I like dogs, but just ordinary dog behaviors (trying or wanting to chase other animals, wanting to go say "hi" to other dogs passing by, running out into the street, running around the parking lot while vehicles were moving, barking for a wide variety of reasons) were, IMO, difficult to deal with in a business situation.

Of course, we're not a factory, and maybe a different dog wouldn't be quite so problematical, so YMMV, but I would think hard about the pros and cons of a dog before you get one.
posted by soundguy99 at 9:12 AM on March 14, 2012


Well, I've experienced two different approaches to using dogs as security. The first time, we had a well-trained dog that was friendly and wandered around during the day and didn't stray at all. I doubt that this dog would have been very effective at actually bailing up someone who got in or anything similar, but it sure as hell barked its head off if anyone came near the place when it was closed up. This was a factory that didn't have a fence around it and the dog was locked into the factory at night. This worked really well and was low impact on the operations, because the dog was basically a pet, so staff could come and go as they needed as long as the dog knew them.

The second time was a response to ridiculously frequent break-ins and a much more extreme solution - again, a well-trained dog but with very different training. This was much more like the stereotypical 'guard dog' and a lot of work was required to bring the fence around the factory up to scratch to keep it in, it had to be particularly trained to respond to the only two people who could open the gates of the factory and it would try to attack anyone else. The dog had to be kept in a run all day because it considered anyone but the two people it recognised as intruders. This was a total pain in the arse, as you can imagine. While it was effective at keeping undesirables out (this was the dog that bailed someone up on the roof), it was also pretty effective at keeping everyone else out.
posted by dg at 4:16 PM on March 14, 2012


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