Top 10 Security Tips for the Holiday Season
While analysts are cautiously optimistic about this holiday season’s economic outlook, businesses need to take steps to prevent security problems from impacting the bottom line. Here are 10 tips to help protect your business this holiday season:
- Make sure your video surveillance system is working properly.
It may have been a while since you looked closely at your video surveillance system and confirmed that it was capturing images properly. You may have also changed your business’s floor layout for the holidays. Look at your surveillance system’s video to make sure that the cameras are still positioned to give you optimal coverage. Check that the video images are clear. Make sure the system’s digital video recorder (DVR) is plugged in! Use DGA’s Video Clip Retrieval to ensure that your DVR is capturing video. - Verify that your holiday decorations and displays do not obstruct your security systems.
Watch out for decorations and displays that may obstruct video cameras or set off motion sensors. Mylar balloons are notorious for causing false alarms. - Test your holdup buttons.
Many businesses have holdup buttons (also referred to as panic buttons) to silently alert the monitoring center in the event of a robbery. It’s important to test your buttons to make sure they are working properly. Call the monitoring center to let us know that you are planning on doing a test. - Inform your security company of your revised holiday hours.
With DGA’s supervised opening and closing service, we will monitor that your security system is only disarmed on a schedule that you set. If you use this valuable service, you need to notify us when your hours change. - Check that your emergency notification list is up to date.
If an alarm is triggered or some other critical event occurs, DGA needs to contact the people on your emergency notification list. Call us to review the list to make sure it contains the proper names and phone numbers. - Be smart about seasonal employees.
If you hire new staff just for the holidays, make sure that their access cards only let them into the areas where they need to gain entry and only during the hours that you wish them to have access. - Watch your video surveillance system’s live feed.
Pickpockets love crowds. Use your video surveillance system to keep a close eye on your business. Some companies tend to only look at their surveillance video after the fact, but to stop pickpockets you need to take an active role and assign a responsible employee to view live video. - Restrict access to stockrooms.
Do your salespeople need to go into the stockrooms? To reduce theft by employees, let stock clerks bring inventory to the retail floor. Tie the stockroom entrance into your access control system to monitor and restrict access. - Protect sensitive inventory with environmental monitoring.
If you have inventory that’s sensitive to heat and cold, install temperature sensors to alert you when the temperature gets above or below an acceptable level. Additionally, cold weather can result in burst pipes so add water sensors to ensure that you can get immediate notification of any flooding problems. - Leverage your security audit trail.
Your security system logs who is entering your premises and accessing secured areas, and at what times they’re doing it. This creates an audit trail that can provide you with valuable security and business intelligence. Review the information regularly. With DGA SystemAlert mail alerts we will send you security system reports on a daily or weekly basis, depending on your preference.
BONUS TIP: Be vigilant.
Your security systems are tools to help protect your business, employees and customers, but ultimately security comes down to you and your employees looking out for potential problems. Keep an eye on your customers, make sure that valuable inventory is never left unattended and that display cases are locked when not actively in use.
DGA Security System customers can call our customer support team at (212) 840-5160 for more help and information on any of these topics.
If you don’t have a security system, it’s not too late to take steps to properly protect your stores, employees and customers. Contact us so we can get you up and running.
