How To Secure Your Building With A Guard Tour System

How do I secure my building with a guard tour system?

1. Define your security goals
2. Maximize your security routes
3. Eliminate paper-based systems
4. Address your security guard’s needs
5. Implement a solution that integrates with your security

A Guard Tour System is a security measure used to track and log the movements of your employees under a variety of applications. These systems provide many benefits for your building — but only when set up and implemented correctly.

So how does one use this security solution? To administer your guard tour system, you should consider your building’s needs and capabilities. Take a look at this guide on how to secure your building with a guard tour system.

Define Your Security Goals

Whether you’re about to set up your security system, or trying to upgrade your current one, you need to start by defining your business’ security goals. This means scrutinizing your operations, traffic, and employees, to figure out what unique risks you’re exposed to. From there, you’ll understand what you need to protect yourself against, and what security features you need to focus on.

Are you at risk of theft? Corporate espionage? Trespassing? Do you deal with confidential materials or information? Are you a public or private space? These kinds of questions will show the gaps in your current security plan and will lead to unique patrol and documentation goals.

Maximize Your Security Routes

Now that you know your security goals, you can plan out your guard tour. As a general rule, your tour should hit every area of concern — i.e. places that are at risk of theft and similar incidents.

Your goal here is to try and maximize the patrols in these areas, while also ensuring that the path your security employees will take is effective. Avoid making them double back through areas they already passed through or take circuitous routes that consume valuable time.

Depending on your security goals, the placement of your security checkpoints will be different. For example, if your main goal is to prevent theft, then your checkpoints should be placed near your storerooms. If your goal is to protect confidential materials, then your checkpoints should include your office spaces and visitor entryways.

Using a digital guard tour system will also allow you to craft ideal patrol routes. These are highly customizable and can be programmed to generate unpredictable paths each day. This will help prevent criminals from predicting and bypassing your physical security routines.

Additionally, digital systems often use readers — such as short-range RFID — which allow for real-time guard check-ins and tracking for faster action in emergencies. This is a huge advantage in case a break-in or theft occurs.

Eliminate Paper-Based Systems

Traditionally, security personnel would have to log their activities using paper and pen, which would then be digitized and uploaded at a later time. This led to a lot of risks, such as:

• Times were not always known or accurate
• Missed or erroneous checkpoints are hard to spot
• Reports are delivered too late to take timely action
• Scheduled patrols were difficult to monitor
• Older reports were unretrievable
• Sometimes resulted in a data encoding backlog

These risks impeded effective security. Additionally, they were time-consuming since a security guard had to write short reports multiple times daily.

To avoid the risks of an analog system, make sure to choose a security system that is fully digital and allows your employees to make reports in real-time. This way, the issue of efficiency and accuracy is solved.

Address Your Security Guard’s Needs

The human factor is essential to any building’s security plans, and this means that your guard tour system should address the needs of your staff. The following are things you should factor in:

• Communication — is your staff trained in this new system? Do they understand how to use these security features, and what their new objectives are? Make sure they are updated and properly informed throughout the process of implementing your new guard tour system.
• Equipment — Are they required to carry new equipment — like RFID tags — on their patrols? Do they understand how to use the readers at their security checkpoints? Without proper training, they may fail to log their movements during their route.
• Management — How often are staff rotations, and how are they planned out? Rotations can keep your guards vigilant, but having too many puts holes in your security. Plan your rotations accordingly to strike a balance.

Using a digital, scalable guard tour system can help you in this regard. As it allows customization, you can tailor-fit your guard tour system to your current employee needs and capabilities.

Implement a Solution that Integrates with Your Security

While guard patrols are one of the most important risk management practices for your building, they are but one facet of your overall security program. In order for this system to work, your guard tour should be able to integrate with your existing protective measures.

Ideally, your CCTV deployments, alarm systems, access control, and other security tools should work hand in hand with your patrol routes. While some products and technology aren’t capable of this, all of ELID’s solutions are made with a fully integrated design.

With ELID’s products, you don’t have to worry about rehauling your entire system and building from the ground up. You simply choose the components of your guard tour system and let its intelligent software do the work.

Key Takeaway

When planning how to secure your building with a guard tour system, keep these five considerations in mind. Proper implementation can produce the desired security upgrade — and a key aspect of that is choosing a highly effective guard tour system.

If you’re seeking a sophisticated digital solution, then we recommend using Roger’s Patrol Master 3 and Matrix V systems — two of the most customizable, scalable options on the market. Click here to learn more about how the Guard Tour System can help your building, or send us a message today for any inquiries you have.