Understanding the security threats in your company is the first step towards securing it. This forms the basis of:
Secure Digital Limited delivers end-to-end solutions that help commercial and industrial enterprises
enhance their security and operations. We work closely with your security management teams to assess and address the threats faced within your organisation, with solutions designed to protect employees, customers, facilities, plants, inventory, production processes and more.
We offer industry leading solutions in intrusion detection, access control, video surveillance, fire and life safety and loss prevention, along with technology integration that provides streamlined management of
security throughout your enterprise.
What’s more, we offer value-added solutions like video management, inventory intelligence and information management to help companies enhance their operations. Whether you are protecting one centralized operation, or many geographically dispersed locations, our commercial and industrial specialists can show you the tools, technologies, systems and services needed to enhance your security and operations.
Five questions to ask yourself about the company safety
Business owners spend years sourcing for funds, building production facilities, developing supply chains, and promoting their product to customers. However, one security breach at a plant can negate all that effort. Most managers know the risks exist, but a lack of appreciation for the importance of attached to proper procedures and systems as well as pressure to restrict budgets often result in token efforts. According to experts, however, the potential for system failures makes professional security too important to be stingy about. Spending on an effective security system is important especially when you consider what companies can lose e.g. intellectual property, products, and even capable staff.
Businesses in the world today face a special set of challenges including lack of trained staff, increased
pressure to control costs, and systematic underestimation of security needs. However, professional service is available from experienced facilities management and consulting firms for costs that won’t panic investors. To help company owners and managers avoid factory down-time, increase efficiency, and save money in the long term, Secure Digital Limited looks at five questions to ask when deciding how to improve a factory’s security.
1. Who can access your facility?
Perhaps the most obvious aspect of ensuring a plant is secure is keeping track of who enters and leaves the premises. A basic way to achieve this is to issue identification cards to employees and setting up a small number of entry points to the building so that unauthorized personnel stand out and cannot spend much time in the facility before being noticed and reported. The cards can simply be paper name cards pinned on clothing. Alternatively, the ID can include more advanced features like magnetic encoding to provide access to restricted areas. At the very least should contain a photo of the employee and specify the areas he or she is allowed to access.
Another element of personnel control is how visitors are admitted to the facility. Visitors to most plants should be required to sign in and out and to wear a card identifying them as such. Additionally, the department the visitor is working with should assign a staff member to escort him or her at all times to make sure they remain in permitted areas.
2. Are you employing the right people?
A unique challenge to maintaining safeguards in most factories is a lack of well-trained staff. It is observed that customarily, a facility’s security manager is the most senior laborer and that, while this may be acceptable for daily operations, such people rarely have the training to respond properly in an emergency. Part of this problem lies in the lack of respect typically attributed to the security profession. This attitude comes with low pay levels, leading to employee discontent and a short-term approach to the job. Most of
the security guards are either very old or very young, and there’s a high rate of turnover. Thus, companies tend to not worry about the training level. While there are no definite guidelines on how many staff are needed, a plant producing high value products should employ at least employ one fulltime, professional security manager.
3. How are your facilities monitored?
An important part of any security plan is how often and by what means a factory is inspected. One method that has become increasingly popular nowadays is using surveillance cameras and motion-detectors to assist management monitor every area of a factory from a central control room. Additionally, alarms and other automatic systems offer precise readings that can be used to improve an overall security plan.
While these tools provide basic means for staying informed about activities around the plant, they are subject to error and should not be the only forms of security. Because of that potential, such systems should not been seen as a substitute for regular, unscheduled patrols by security personnel and building managers. Although it may seem inconvenient, walking through the facility provides decision-makers with a
more accurate sense of any irregularities and also discourages internal theft.
4. Are you choosing the right systems for your business?
Another drawback of relying on technology is the potential for measures to overlap, resulting in inefficient operations. For example can have more than 25 security cameras monitored on five screens by only one or two security staff. Since there is no way to monitor all of the displays simultaneously, the company would be better off reducing the number of cameras and allowing guards to focus on the higher-risk areas. If a piece of security equipment doesn’t seem to make sense, there is, most likely a better way to achieve the item’s goal. For instance, a factory with fingerprint readers placed at the door to the factory floor may not make sense because workers using it have dirty hand from the job, so it can’t be read.
5. How are security matters documented?
The most important way to keep a factory secure is to document all security procedures and potential threats. By having a set protocol, new staff members can easily be trained on their role in keeping the plant safe. Overall staff morale will improve from the feeling that management places a high priority on protecting those that work there. Meanwhile, a regular assessment of threats allows administrators to channel company resources to the areas that need it most.
Companies should conduct a threat assessment at least every two years to monitor changes in the operating environment and adjust their standard operating procedures accordingly.
