7 Steps to Choosing The Right Safe
Hansab's partner Gunnebo wrote about how to choose the best safe for your home or office. We are bringing you the 7 steps of how to make the right decision when choosing a safe.
1. Don't help the thief
Feeling that any level of protection is better than none can be deceiving. If you buy a safe that has not been tested and certified, you will help the thief, as you have put all your valuables in one place. Even more, when a small safe is not attached to the floor or wall, means the burglar can simply take it home and open at his leisure.
2. Organise, monitor, protect
As Gunnebo says, it is important to observe the "trinity of security" - organise, monitor, protect. Before even buying a safe, make sure you follow the basic discipline of keeping your valuables hidden, installing secure locks and ensuring staff is vigilant. When these measures are not enough, then you should decide to buy a safe.
3. Buy yourself time
A skilled and determined burglar can break into any safe eventually. The better the safe, the longer it will take. A safe needs to go hand in hand with an alarm system, or some other detection system, such as neighbours or security guards.
4. Know your enemy
You need to profile the possible intruder: are you likely to be up against a professional who has been tipped off about your valuables, or just an opportunist thief looking for some quick cash? The bigger the prize, the greater the risks a burglar will take to get it, which might include using bulky, dangerous our noisy technology.
5. Talk to a professional
The dilemma of the security manager is that you can never get it right: if you spend a substantial sum on a safe that is very secure, but then there is no burglary, it looks like you have wasted the company’s money; take a cheaper option and the safe suffers a successful attack, and you have miscalculated. A methodical assessment of the risks, plus professional advice, will maximise the chances that you make the right decision.
6. Check the ECB certifications
This is straightforward. The European Certification Body, or ECB•S, is jointly supported by insurers and manufacturers of safes to provide independent, expert laboratory testing and auditing of manufacturing processes for security products. Accredited laboratories take their job very seriously, train their people, and cooperate between themselves, making surprise visits to factories to check materials and manufacturing processes. Some 120 companies worldwide, including Gunnebo, use the ECB•S as an independent benchmark.
7. Choose which grade of safe suits your needs
Safes are graded into eight levels of security from 0 to VII. According to which country you live in, insurers will promise to insure the contents of the safe for different amounts according to the grade – and according to whether your home has a quality burglar alarm. So you can match the safe to the value of the contents you wish to keep in it, and the preventive measure you have already taken to secure your property. You can find a concise guide to the amounts insured in different countries on the ECB•S website.
Check all safes Hansab provides: http://www.hansab.com/en/safes