Warehouse Physical Security Checklist: Best Practices
No matter the industry, company size, or location, warehouse theft is a severe problem. Even the US Marines Corps (USMC) is susceptible to warehouse theft (a group of four Marines stole $300,000 in tactical gear between 2016-2018). For businesses, theft causes direct losses and costly inefficiencies, which make competing in the market more difficult.
In this post, we created a warehouse physical security checklist that will help you implement the security measures you need to prevent theft at your warehouse.
Warehouse Physical Security Checklist
Address Risk & Vulnerabilities
The starting point of your warehouse security efforts should be to prevent unauthorized access to your facilities from the outside.
1. Building Structure
If you’re building a new warehouse, you should choose durable construction materials that can stand against damage and intrusion. You should also ensure the integrity of the facility through regularly scheduled inspections and repairs.
2. Perimeter Security
Install perimeter fencing around the shipping, receiving, and inventory/storage areas. This move will make accessing your warehouse (outside of designated gates) much more difficult.
If you lack perimeter fencing or are unable to install it, then you must develop a strategy to keep your warehouse’s yard secure from unlawful entry. This strategy could involve specific security systems, such as the ones we’ve documented towards the end of this checklist.
3. Entrypoints
Be it the gates through which vehicles enter and exit your facility or the entrances your staff and visitors use, you must man and/or monitor all of these entry points. You should focus on keeping as few entry points to the facility as possible (while maintaining both efficiency and safety). This approach will cut the number of vulnerabilities or potential attack vectors for intruders.
4. Lighting
Provide maximum visibility to your security staff and camera system by properly lighting both the inside and outside of your warehouse. This must include each of the entrypoints, storage areas, shipping and receiving, parking areas, and perimeter fencing (or unfenced yard).
Essential Security Systems
To achieve the above objectives and properly secure your warehouse, you need the following:
5. Video Surveillance
A 24/7-hour video surveillance system is a must. This system acts as a deterrent to would-be intruders and thieves by removing their ability to hide. It also equips you to audit your facility following a security breach or event.
However, with your camera system recording hours of footage each day, finding relevant information through it can be difficult.
You can use video analytics to program your cameras to pick-up on faces, license plates, and activity spikes (in off-hours and less busy areas). This will equip you to get relevant information sooner. You could also program the system to alert you of abnormal activities.
6. Access Control
You should restrict access to sensitive areas of your warehouse (e.g., shipping/receiving and storage) with key card/code-based locks. This will prevent outsiders from moving through the facility. You should also maintain different levels of access for each of your employees — i.e., provide access to specific parts of the warehouse on a needs-only basis.
7. Intruder Detection & Response
You can acquire the ability to respond to a potential intrusion by installing an intruder detection and managed alarm monitoring system.
You should have motion sensors on each entrypoint — including potential ones, such as windows — and a system that will sound-off an alarm when the intruder tries tampering with the system or breaks in. With managed alarm system monitoring, you’ll get a team to monitor your facility and, in case of an event, alert you and law enforcement of it.
Your managed alarm system provider can also monitor your facility’s safety and environmental disaster systems, such as fire alarm and suppression, air scrubbers, etc.
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This security checklist covers the design and system requirements for physically securing your warehouse. But as we discussed in an earlier post about warehouse theft prevention, you also need to implement specific processes to effectively secure your facility.
To get a complete grasp of your warehouse’s vulnerabilities, security requirements, and needed process changes, you should contact a professional security company.
These companies can bring a wealth of experience from securing other facilities, which they can use to find all of your gaps and develop security systems that will meet your needs.
At Logixx Security, we’ve spent over 25 years helping businesses secure their commercial properties from costly theft and breaches. Call us today to protect your bottom line from theft and shrinkage.