Most people don’t think much about home security until after they have a break-in and their belongings are stolen. Many of those same people that thought that because they owned and used a safe that they were protected. Unfortunately, many burglars have been shown to simply pick up safe or roll it out of the house and open it elsewhere at their leisure. Here are some easy ways to protect your safe from burglars:
- Hide it: Most safe owners have their safes in the basement store room. Some in there bedroom or office closets. Why not take an old moving box that is about the same size as the safe, cut the bottom of it out, tape the top and place it over the safe. Write on the outside of the box: “old shoes”, “extra clothes”, or something else that most burglars have no interest in. This simple and cheap trick may keep them from finding your safe.
- Secure it: This is probably the most important step you can do when you own a safe. Bolt the unit to the floor using the holds in the bottom of the safe. If your safe does not have any holes, you may consider drilling some in it. Alternatively, most smaller biometric safes will have a cable that is secured on the inside of the safe and then is meant to wrap around something immovable outside the safe to make it difficult to just pick up the safe and walk off with it. While the tether nor bolting it down to the floor will not stop a burglar from getting the safe if they really want it, it may make them think twice about spending a lot of time trying to remove it.
- Alarm it: If you have a home alarm system, see if you can purchase a contact that can be added to the safe. If the safe if moved, it will break the contact and set off the alarm. This will work best if the alarm is connected to a central monitoring system that can alert the police.
One other alternative is to consider the type of safe you own. Most combination safes can be opened quickly by removing the dial and hacking into the lock. Digital safes are less prone to brute force attack of the lock, but combinations can often be guessed. Biometric safes are almost impossible to trick into opening.
Whatever the type of safe you own, doing some simple things can help you and it survive a burglary without losing the contents of the safe.