The criminals convicted for last Easter’s Hatton Garden safety deposit burglary were sentenced this week. The estimated £14m heist was the biggest burglary in English history and should serve as a wake-up call to all businesses with valuable physical assets, it is claimed.
According to Beaming, a communications provider that has security monitoring companies among its customers, advances in monitoring and secure internet technologies made in recent years could have stopped the gang in the act without a penny lost.
Sonia Blizzard, managing director of Beaming, pictured, says: “While few small businesses can justify the cost of a permanent team of security guards on their premises, Government figures show that four in every ten businesses experienced criminal acts against their premises last year and that theft, burglary and vandalism were the most frequent types. With the police under increasing pressure to do more with less, the more businesses can do to protect themselves the better.
“CCTV at Hatton Garden was not being used to its fullest potential. Modern internet technologies allow live-feed CCTV footage to be transmitted securely to remote monitoring companies. Had this been in place, CCTV would have shown immediately that suspicious activities were happening and compelled the police to take action.
“Many of today’s career criminals are smart enough to know that CCTV footage can be beamed to a remote monitoring location, and some will seek to cut the broadband lines prior to a burglary. As a result, security providers are working with businesses to ensure a backup connection – such as the 4G mobile phone network – is available to kick in the moment the primary internet connection fails.
“The ability to connect CCTV to remote security specialists through a secure internet connection moves it from being a deterrent to a real-time crime fighting tool capable of stopping the perpetrators in their tracks. The best protected businesses are those whose intruder alarm, CCTV, access control and fire detection services are connected to an active alarm receiving centre where trained professionals can monitor all of the evidence they produce. This kind of approach could have stopped the Hatton Garden gang in the act.”
