Preparing For Riots By Target Hardening Your Facility

Riots often subject unsuspecting business owners to burglary, looters, and vandalism. Riots are usually the result of 4 common causes, out of control celebrations, out of control protests, controversial events, and incitation. The best way to prepare for riots is to provide your facility with the right amenities and procedures to maintain a safe environment during unsafe circumstances. There is no single solution to make your facility completely riot-proof. To prevent riot destruction, you must acknowledge numerous techniques and come up with a solid plan.

Threat Assessment

It is important to conduct a threat and vulnerability assessment of your facility to properly enhance security. A threat assessment is when you identify, quantify, and rank the vulnerabilities within your facility as well as the systems, networks, and procedures that you currently have in place. The assessment helps you determine and acknowledge the active and potential threats you face. Some physical areas you could evaluate include entry and exit points as well as stairs, windows, communal areas, or control centers. The goal is to determine what safety enhancements you have, what’s missing, and what steps should be taken to fix any safety issues that are found.

Access Control

Maintaining control over your facility’s entry and exit points will help a great deal in situations where intruders may seek to gain access. Placing physical barriers around those areas will help you maintain a higher level of control. Guard booths or guard shacks work as a physical deterrent to break-ins, especially when extra security personnel are present. Gated entries also decrease the likelihood of intruders approaching your facility and they can be controlled by security personnel, a code, or a magnetic key card. Locks, alarms, and shutters are other forms of physical barriers that can help during a riot.

Surveillance Capabilities/Security Lighting

Enhancing surveillance around your facility can help local law enforcement identify looters who participated in the riot and possibly retrieve any stolen goods. Intruders are also usually cautious of committing break-ins when there is heavy surveillance in the area. The appearance of a security camera alone is likely not enough to discourage rioters, but business owners and security personnel can see what’s happening in real time, monitor the situation without going outside, and recognize when a person or group is approaching. You should go a step further and increase the security lighting around the building so that there is better visibility further discouraging intruders who don’t want to be caught in the act.

Ballistic Glass

Ballistic glass can help protect the windows and glass doors of your facility. Glass is among the most vulnerable components of commonly targeted buildings during riots. Without a stronger layer of protection, it is easier to throw objects through glass material to gain access to a facility. You may also have staff or security inside during a riot and ballistic glass would take longer to get through providing more time for them to respond to the situation more appropriately. Ballistic glass can also be flame resistant protecting your building from flaming materials that can result in the facility burning down.

Contact Kontek Industries

Kontek creates, designs, manufactures and implements wholistic target hardening solutions to protect structures from physical attacks. Contact Kontek Industries and we will review your security objectives and design a custom plan to harden your facility. We provide custom solutions that provide covert and overt protection to project a culture of safety and target resilience. Our solutions will help prevent, deter and protect against ballistic, blast or vehicle impact threats to your facility. We are here to help guide the conversation on what steps can be taken to harden your building, making it a safer and more resilient place to work in, whether you are a civilian or law enforcement officer.