Tips for Preventing Crime Against Your Business

Protecting a professional office from crime is very similar to protecting a home: secure all entranceways carefully, pin the windows, and light the exterior well.  (See Tips for Protecting Your Home Against Crime.)  All that advice carries over to retail establishments, but stores and shops must also combat petty thieves and shoplifters. 

Do not consider security an afterthought. Rather, design your store to combat theft.  Shoplifters usually seek out some quiet, hidden area in which they can conceal merchandise.  Short, narrow displays will minimize such �blind spots,� as will keeping posters and promotional displays in the center of your aisles.  Wide aisles provide salespeople with good visibility and has also been shown to foil pickpockets, as it is more difficult for them to �bump� into your customers.

If you choose to use cameras, note that they are most effective when the monitoring screen is in view of customers.  A visible monitor has been shown to be fifty percent more effective than cameras alone in protecting employees and preventing loss.  Of course, you will also need to have someone diligently watching the screens, as well as security on the floor in constant contact with the person watching the screens.  An �active� system such as this is difficult to rely on, and is quite expensive to implement and maintain. 

For many shops a passive system known as Electronic Article Surveillance, or EAS, has proven more cost-effective.  In its most common form, EAS are the tags attached to articles to either set off an alarm or stain an article with permanent ink if they are taken from the store.  The ink renders the article useless, and a single security guard can monitor each exit�s alarm.  Some retail stores have reported an 80% decrease in casual theft after implementing an EAS system.       

White Collar Crime
White collar crime can take many forms: credit card fraud, insurance fraud, embezzlement, and many others.  Unless you are a credit card or insurance company, your main concern is with embezzlement.  In all its various forms, many ingenious, embezzlement ultimately means that someone is diverting your profits or assets to themselves.  It is impossible to completely thwart embezzlement, as it is always necessary to trust others with your company�s money at some point.  Still, it is cheaper to prevent embezzlement than to cover the potentially crippling loss.  The best one can do is limit the opportunities for paper theft and control the scale of the losses.  Often, that is enough to all but eliminate the problem. 

Almost invariably, embezzlement begins within a company�s ranks.  Someone to whom you have granted proper access abuses that access to steal your assets.  To stop the potential for embezzlement, it is important to understand how an embezzler thinks. First, they will usually look at your procedures, your employees, and your physical controls to find glaring weaknesses.  Then they examine your company�s financial documents and pick out those that can be manipulated.  A glaring security weakness allows them to steal the money, while forgeable documents allow them to cover up the theft.  You should look objectively at all of these points and correct any weak spots before they can be exploited against you.   Businesses that run on cycles, such as banks, investment houses, and subscription services are most likely to be targeted for embezzlement.  The thief expects that knowledge of the cycles will allow concealed pilfering of your assets. 

Cybercrime
As more of your financial business is conducted online, the opportunity for a thief to abuse Electronic Fund Transfers is more prevalent.  Take special care to safeguard against abuse here; consider hiring a security consultant.  

Many people think that a firewall is sufficient to keep out hackers, but hackers have grown so sophisticated that a single firewall is no longer enough.  Rather, in addition to a main firewall it is essential to construct further firewalls between your sub-intranets.  (It may be best to hire a consultant for this task.)  Not only will this help prevent an internal embezzler from transferring money around without your consent, but it will make it much more difficult for an outside hacker to gain access to your entire network. 

Police forces have long been wary of prosecuting cyber crimes, whether internal or external, because of the difficulty in placing blame and the lack of resources to conduct a proper technological investigation.  That�s why it�s important for you to police yourself.  You�ll need a technologically savvy, experienced security force to monitor transactions and data, as well as the more typical security force to protect your physical assets.  Together with properly managed firewalls, this monitoring security force will offer your business the most complete protection available against both electronic and physical asset loss.   

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