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Most businesses, no matter how online or IT-led, will need to operate with some form of storage capacity. Offices require safety equipment, bulk orders, and even some old/replacement IT equipment itself to be stored in a safe space, somewhere you can keep your valuables. It might be a place where you house your warehouse goods, or somewhere you protect your files. No matter the reason for curating a storage space with a degree of security, it’s important you know how to protect it. After all, this will often be not the beating heart of your company, but the stomach, feeding your business with the goods it needs from bottom to top. You cannot afford to have this broken into or impeded by the elements.

Here are some tips for tightening security around this space:

Structural Integrity

It might be that this is an outhouse. It might be a full warehouse. It might also be an addendum to your office that just outside of the building. No matter what you use the storage space for, it’s likely to be of a size to not only allow for your goods, but also for staff members to index and maneuver this space. This is why it’s likely going to be an exterior space to your office, but there are exceptions.

With this, it’s important to analyze the structural integrity of that building itself. Sometimes shabby old bricks can be taken down with a targeted sledgehammer. Sometimes a roof can be broken into, warranting the use of much more secure metal roofing. Sometimes the elements might have access, dripping water on goods that need to stay dry to function. This means that continually repairing and inspecting the strength of your structural integrity becomes a maintenance task to prioritize.

Security

The strongest structural integrity in the world will mean nothing without adequate security. Invest in an alarm system, a solid means of indexing inventory, guards if necessary, and a competent alarm system. It can also be worth implementing a system in which whoever enters the space has to declare their name and the time of the entry and exit. This helps you avoid theft from within your staff, and develop a responsibility for the entire workforce to take care of this environment.

Pests

It’s not just humans you need to watch out for. Pests can often spread within warm, relatively still environments. Pests can also find an easy way into the building, without much in the way of difficulty. For this reason, hiring the services of a pest control firm to set your building up with traps, necessary poison and other deterrents can help you manage the hygiene of the space. It will also help you manage your costed goods, as there’s nothing seemingly more enjoyable to a rat than cable wire to chew through.

Protecting your stored assets does take a little time and energy, but the effort is ultimately rewarded with a lack of issue or loss in value. Be sure to keep an eye on this often, and you’ll find that you are gifted with protected belongings indefinitely.