How to Improve Warehouse Security
Warehouses are common targets for criminals. It makes sense, since these facilities often hold a large amount of inventory, not to mention electronics, tools, technology, and other assets. Since warehouses are frequently attacked by criminals, it’s critical that you take steps to protect your facility.
Here are five ways that you can drastically improve security at your warehouse.
Have Proper Lighting
Criminal thrive in the dark. To reduce crime at your warehouse, make sure that you have proper lighting installed both inside and outside of your facility. All entrances and exits should be well-lit, as well as storage areas, fences, parking lots, and anywhere else where criminals could lurk.
Not only does proper lighting make criminals more visible to staff and passersby, but it also improves security camera footage, which is often difficult to capture in poor lighting.
Restrict Access
It’s critical that you prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining access to your warehouse facility. However, it’s also important to restrict access within your warehouse. Not all areas need to be accessible to all employees. Use security gates to keep sensitive areas or areas that contain dangerous or valuable items off limits. Mobile security gates can easily be installed around warehouse aisles or within hallways to prevent unwanted access.
Secure Warehouse Doors
The doors to your warehouse should never be left without proper security. This means that all access doors should be properly secured with physical tools, including loading dock doors, garage doors, windows, and any other access points.
Physical security gates are an ideal way to secure warehouse entry points as they restrict access while still allowing you to see through them. Plus, they also allow for ventilation, which is needed in hot warehouses during the summer.
Unlike surveillance cameras and alarm systems, physical security gates place a strong barrier between criminals and your property. They are also highly visible, so criminals know that your business is secure just by looking at it. In many cases, criminals avoid locations that have physical security installed.
Train Staff
Make sure that your staff understand how critical security is to your organization. Ensure that they follow all security protocols, that they keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour, and that they work to keep the facility as safe as possible.
It’s also important to ensure that your staff is trustworthy. Conduct background checks before hiring and always check references.
Don’t Forget Data Security
Criminals aren’t just after the physical goods in your warehouse. There is also a large amount of important company data stored on the computers in your facility. Be sure that all staff have unique logins and strong passwords, that they only use their own IDs to access company computers, and that they sign out or lock a computer system when they walk away from it.
Data breaches and unauthorized access to your organization’s computer system can be incredibly costly for your business, so make sure that all staff are properly trained on your organization’s data security processes.