Is Your Garage Door Secure?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010 0:35Watch this short (less than a minute) video on how simple it is to gain access to a building through a garage door. While there are other methods of breaking into a home or business, this is one that is often overlooked or forgotten even by seasoned security professionals. It is also one that is low-tech and very easy to do.
Garage Door – I Am In!
Securing Your Garage Door
As you can see from the video, it does not really take any time or high tech tools to get into some garage doors. Even though the garage door is usually the largest exterior opening to a home or business, it is an opening that is often not protected as well as others. Unfortunately, most criminals know this.
An often-recommended security tip is to remove the pull cord, but as you can see from the video that really would not stop the criminal from opening the garage door using this break-in method. Of course, I would still remove the pull cord because it can be used against you by criminals using other very similar methods.
After removing the pull cord, secure the lever that the pull cord was attached to. One method used by some is to simply zip tie the pull cord lever to the bar so that someone cannot hook and pull the lever without first removing the zip ties which is hard to do from the outside. Remember, in most security situations, you do not have to have perfect security. You just have to be a harder target than your neighbor. Most of the time, the criminal is looking for the highest return with the lowest risk so if it is easier for them to break into someone else’s business or home, they will choose that location and not yours.
Locking the garage door is another very effective recommendation, but I have found most people do not do this. Most people want to use their automatic garage door openers without having to get out of their vehicle and unlock the garage door. While locks are recommended for homes, they should definitely be used by business garage doors. A lot of businesses do not have any exterior locks on their garage doors. Lever sliding locks, padlocks, or both can be used on the interior of these types of garage doors. I would recommend the use of some type of locking mechanism on garage doors used in business but is also a good idea for garage doors in your home.
If you have any other thoughts or recommendations for securing garage doors at your home or business, please leave a comment and share your thoughts with the other readers of this site.
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