Ensuring a secure perimeter is essential for maintaining safeguarding standards and providing a safe environment where children and young adults can learn.
Perimeter surveillance prevents unauthorised access to your premises and enables intruders to be identified should they successfully breach the boundaries. By investing in the security of your perimeter, you can successfully mitigate any potential threats to the safety of students and reduce the risk of damage to property through acts of vandalism or theft.
In this article, we will address how to evaluate the security of your perimeter, discuss how you can create an effective perimeter surveillance system, and outline practical steps you can take to ensure that your boundary line is properly protected.
Evaluating Your Perimeter
To ensure a secure perimeter, you first need to understand the weaknesses in your current perimeter setup. This involves carrying out a thorough evaluation.
First, complete a risk assessment of the security threats. You should identify which areas an intruder could use to gain access to your site, and which are the highest-risk locations. For instance, consider any ‘blind spots’ in perimeter surveillance, areas which lack visibility, and boundary weaknesses - such as fences that could be scaled.
This will allow you to prioritise work effectively and invest your resources in the most efficient manner.
Secondly, assess your day-to-day operations. This may include identifying high-risk points during the day, such as school drop-off and pickup times, the lunch hour, and other breaks.
Then, consider how you improve security around these times. This may involve setting up a video intercom at the gates, or a CCTV system by the front entrance.
Finally, you should look into how you can integrate your security systems with each other, as fully integrated security systems are necessary to provide maximal protection.
For example, this may involve integrating security lighting with CCTV cameras to ensure that images are captured if an intruder sets off the security lights.
Planning Your Perimeter Security
The structure and design of your perimeter security is essential for mitigating the risk of security breaches. It’s not enough to simply station a few CCTV cameras around the boundary - you should instead use a layered approach to ensure that the security gets tighter the closer an intruder gets to your premises.
When planning and designing your perimeter security, consider how you will utilise the following methods:
Physical Barriers - Your physical barriers are the first line of defence against an intruder. You should consider both the types of fencing and walls that you use to secure your perimeter, and their height.
Security fencing and walls come in a range of designs, such as vertical bar fencing, bow top fencing, and mesh panel fencing, and many types of fencing can be made anti-climb to prevent intruders from getting in or children getting out.
Similarly, walls can be covered with anti-climb paint to prevent them from being scaled. You should also consider the type of gates you use to secure the entrance points, taking factors such as their height and locking mechanisms into account.
Detection Security - You should ensure that if an intruder does successfully breach the physical barriers, they will be detected on site. This involves installing security systems such as CCTV cameras, intruder alarms, motion detectors, and security lighting.
In addition, consider the vulnerable points in your boundary line and how they can be monitored should an intruder attempt to gain access via these areas.
Access Controls - Access control systems can prevent trespassers from entering the most vulnerable areas of the site, such as the classroom buildings.
You can use access controls at the main entrance to ensure that only approved persons are allowed inside the grounds, and in secure areas such as offices, which will contain personal information about the students.
Alerting The Authorities - If an intruder successfully gets past your defences, how will you alert the police?
There are many ways to alert the authorities in an emergency – like for example, using remote-monitored intruder alarms that automatically contact the police in the event of a security breach.
Practical Steps To Ensure A Secure Perimeter
Maintain Visibility - You can invest a lot of resources installing CCTV systems, but they will be ineffective if visibility is not effectively maintained.
Therefore, make sure there are minimal blockages to visibility by ensuring that any hedges and trees in the line of sight are regularly trimmed, and by installing security lighting to brighten dark areas.
Check The Fencing Regularly - If an intruder does successfully breach your boundary, they may have created holes in your defences. For instance, they might have cut through your security fencing with wire clippers.
This presents a security weakness that others can also take advantage of. Therefore, you should regularly inspect your security fencing to ensure there are no holes or gaps which an intruder can use to gain access.
Use Access Permissions - You should regularly update your access control permissions to ensure that unauthorised persons cannot enter secure areas. Such individuals could include members of staff who have left their jobs, been dismissed, or had their access control permissions restricted for whatever reason.
Review CCTV Footage - For your CCTV system to be effective, you need to regularly review the footage.
This will help you to identify if an intruder has gained access to the site, or if a criminal is ‘casing’ your premises in preparation for a break-in attempt.
Want to ensure that your premises is kept safe, secure, and free from intruders? Contact our expert team!
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