Many companies today often underestimate the importance of risk assessments until they come across a breach or loss of confidential assets. Such incidences could occur due to any reason from employee forgery to negligence in security measures among others.
Risk assessment processes are crucial and are designed to help prevent such events, while saving you headaches and worries in the future. It’s the one thing that will protect your organization, ensuring all your systems and protocols are in tune by fortifying your building’s security inside out.
Let’s find out how important risk assessments are and the way they can safeguard your building and business operations against threats.
Why is a Thorough Assessment Necessary for Your Building?
Fraudulent attacks on your organisation can happen in many different ways. So while it’s recommended to have safety measures in place for securing your organisation’s most confidential digital assets, protecting physical assets is equally important.
Vulnerable areas such as gates, doors, entry passage, parking lots, etc. if not secured can become entry points for attackers to gain unauthorised access to your premises.
However, when you conduct a vulnerability survey as a form of risk assessment, you can significantly increase the security and safety of your work premises.
How Do You Tell if Your Premises Need a Risk Assessment?
There are plenty of signs that can foretell the need for an assessment of your premises.
Unclear or messy video footage is one of the most common ones, which in itself is a big vulnerability for intrusion. A security system that’s rigid, difficult to expand, and not flexible is also something to look for.
Any hardwired alarm system or a system with no remote monitoring capabilities can also be another sign which may put your organisation’s building security at risk, and may call for an assessment.
Where Should Risk Assessment Be Done?
To make sure your building security is not compromised in any way, you can start assessing security systems or places such as:
- Video Equipment
You can start with your video security systems which may include your CCTV cameras, monitors, or even encoders. You can check whether they operate continuously or only work upon sensing motion. Look at the specific location of cameras, the area they capture and the areas not covered by them.
- Access Control
You’d want to carefully examine key access points across your building. These could be doors and locks, biometric sensors, gates, panels, and alarm systems. Which windows are alarmed or secured? And doors? Which ones aren’t? To assess, you can see if the alarms work with each other or other parts of the system, as well as auditing the number and identity of staff who know how to disable biometric access.
- Physical Locks and Keys
These are prime targets for intruders to make their way in. Make sure you check if your building doors are secured with superior-grade locks, including looking at how vulnerable the amount of gap left within the frame is when the door is closed, the number of master keys you have and who else has access.
- Rooms, Areas, and Other Miscellaneous Locations
There are multiple rooms and areas that are often neglected which thieves and fraudsters can take advantage of and should therefore be assessed. Figure out how difficult it is to get into your premises through the garage, assess how your parking areas are being monitored, check whether your server rooms are secured adequately, note if there cameras safeguarding the roof area and look for any entrances that are left unlocked.
How a Security Company Can Help
A risk assessment performed by a professional security company can help you define your company’s security protocols and build a secure framework to achieve your desired security goals. The security experts can thus start implementing needed measures and bring your security vision to life from concept to completion.
And that’s where we come in. Our professionals at National Protective Services will gladly examine your existing security protocols to help you determine the best plan of action to suit your requirements. Please Get in touch with us to learn more.