Even though many of us carry around less cash than we used to, many of your patrons still pay with cash, which means you need secure safes to store your deposits.
There are numerous different secure safes and safe locks available in today’s market, although the security level of these safes varies widely.
Some are about as secure as your household filing cabinet, while others seem to have Fort Knox level security.
If you lie somewhere closer to the filing cabinet part of the security spectrum, there are a few things you can do to boost the security level of your safes.
Purchase Higher Class Secure Safes
First things first, you want to make sure that the physical safe container itself meets your security needs.
Underwriter Laboratories (UL) categorizes safes into one of five classes. The classes are tested for:
- Tool resistance;
- Torch resistance; and
- Time to penetrate.
Each class of safe carries a maximum insurance coverage as well. As your class safe goes up, so does the insurance coverage.
Install Locks with Additional Security Features
If you don’t want to spend the money on brand new secure safes, you can still enhance the safes that you already have by installing safe locks with additional security features.
A few of our favorites include:
Time Delay
Have you ever seen a sticker on a drive thru window that says “Our Safes are Equipped with a Time Delay?”
Time delay is a handy little feature on locks which makes it very difficult for robbers to take money from your secure safes.
Keypads with a time delay allow you to delay the amount of time after the code is entered before the safe will open. After entering the code, you will need to wait a specified period of time (typically 10 minutes), before entering the code again to gain access to the safe.
This deters robbers because they will have to wait around to gain access to the safe. Often times, this is close to enough time to allow the police to arrive on-scene.
Opening Window
An opening window specifies pre-set time frames in which secure safes can be opened. Any attempt outside of these time frames are ignored by the lock.
Dual Custody
Keypads with dual custody prevent a single user from opening the lock. Two users must enter their codes before the safe will unlock. This feature is particularly helpful for deterring inside theft.
Penalty Lockout
If your keypad goes into penalty lockout, it will emit a long series of beeps, and then will not accept any further code entries for a pre-defined time period. This deters people from trying numerous codes to gain entry to the safe.
Adding even one of these additional security features will go a long way toward increasing the security of your safes and thwarting both internal and external theft. Many of our customers opt to at least have a penalty lockout period as well as a time delayed opening.
If you need help determining what class of secure safes you need or finding safe locks that have the appropriate security features for your facility, let us know. We’re happy to help!