Gabfocus Spotlight: What security features should every facility have?

June 9, 2022

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self storage help video banner with quote: "Security is paramount to everything you do as an operator" by Kevin Alvarado
3 min

Security is one of the top concerns of your tenants. It should also be one of your top concerns. So what does security really mean, and what type of security should you have at your facility?

In this Gabfocus Spotlight, we hear from Kristi Adams of OpenTech Alliance and Kevin Alvarado of Storable as they discuss must-have security features.


Question: "What security features should every facility have?"

Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:

 

In this Gabfocus Session: Security, Gates, and Smart Units, we talked about all things security with experts Kristi Adams (OpenTech Alliance), Hayden Buettner (Janus International), and Kevin Alvarado (Storable). Our panelists talked about key security features to include at your facility, what security means to them, and more!

Check out the full Session to dive deeper! 

Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what Kevin and Kristi had to say:

When I think about security, I think it's paramount.

It's everything to you as an operator. And I think it starts off with having a cloud-based access control system.

I think that the reason why that's incredibly important is because—I mean, let's look back to a couple of years ago when the pandemic really kicked off. It really forced all of us to go to our homes and work from home and heck, right now we're all remote, right? We're not in the same building.

And so I think that what that means, is you need to be able to manage your facility from wherever you are. And that means you need to know exactly who's coming and going. You need to make sure that your cloud-based access control system is providing you data in real-time.

I think that's something that sometimes gets overlooked is what good does it do you if you go away for the weekend and you come back on Monday, or maybe you log in on Monday and you're seeing—you're combing through videos, you're combing through activity logs, and you're seeing things that happened after the fact.

So a cloud-based access control system that can provide you data when you need it the most, which is the moment that it happens, to me, is the foundation of security."

—Kevin Alvarado


"To piggyback off Kevin, I do love the cloud-based. Right?

And there's so much data that's the other thing. It's kind of a linchpin in our industry that's new. Transitioning to cloud-based access control we have a lot of data now that we're capturing on when tenants are accessing, how many delinquent attempts a month.

There's a bunch of knowledge behind what Kevin said.

But I think really what I would add to that is making sure you have a gate, like, let's talk new builds, new developments, like think of cameras. Right?

We have what we call Smarteye, and it's a proactive system.

And so whether you have a facility manager on-site or you're unmanned remote, having a proactive system, we have a virtual security team that can detect motion. Right. If it's a bird, it flags it as a bird.

But if it's a guy walking in a black hoodie at 10:00 P.M., through the IP cameras, we can say, hey, you in the black hoodie, the police have been notified.

So it's really that proactive vs. reactive that we're seeing as well as the cloud-based access control.

And then also your lock. Right? I know there's some facilities out there that are still utilizing, like a padlock. So I think thinking through a disk or cylinder lock, that's also super important at the actual unit."

—Kristi Adams

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