Instead you discover, as you move inside with a sensation the phrase ‘sinking feeling’ doesn’t even begin to cover, that nearly all of your kit – Macs, printers, servers, monitors, scanners, the lot – has gone.
Hopefully this isn’t a scenario many print bosses will ever experience. But for director of Cheshire-based printers Toucan Images Chris Regan, this nightmare became a very real and distressing reality earlier this year. His property had been ‘scouted’ as part of a professional operation involving six other businesses in the area. With no way of serving customers for seven weeks and £19,000 worth of kit gone, the company nearly folded.
Most galling for Regan is his suspicion that such a devastating blow might have been avoided. Security, he’s the first to admit, wasn’t especially tight: "If you’ve never been a victim of crime, either in your business or personal life, you don’t really think of it. It’s only when you start to look around that you think ‘I was a bit stupid there, we should have done this or we should have done that’."
Unfortunately there are many more Regans out there, obliviously laying themselves open to the kind of crime that could be potentially fatal for their businesses. Police recorded 232,500 instances of burglary at non-residential dwellings (so predominantly at business premises) in 2012/13.
The good news is that this is down 9% from 2011/12, with research by Secured by Design (the security initiative set up by the Association of Chief Police Officers), indicating that this is down to businesses tightening their security. The bad news is that printers still aren’t on the whole the most security-savvy bunch, according to some.
"I don’t think this is at the top of printers’ priorities to be honest," says Paul Parkin, managing director of Thamesdown Marketing Services. His company suffered a break-in back in October 2010 that left it £42,000 out of pocket in missing stamps. "Although I can think of printers who do seem to be hot on security, I can also think of a couple where you can just wander in through their loading bay door and nobody even challenges you," he says.
The reason for this is simple, says Toucan Image’s Regan. Although he had all of the usual security measures – CCTV cameras, double-glazed windows, burglar alarm and a mortise lock – he hadn’t wanted to spend any more on security. In a print climate where every penny must be scrutinised for potential ROI, business security often just doesn’t get a look-in.
"We were protected to a certain degree but we didn’t have shutters. To a small business £3,500 is a lot of money because it doesn’t actually bring anything to the business," says Regan, adding: "As a small business, that cost comes straight off your bottom line – that’s your profit. You’ve got to generate that money. To make that three grand, you’re talking, for us, probably about £18,000 worth of turnover."
High stakes
But of course, as the examples of Toucan Images and Thamesdown Marketing Services demonstrate, not putting sufficient measures in place can prove a lot more costly. And the stakes, in an increasingly electronic, data-driven world, are becoming increasingly high.
Many might think data security doesn’t apply to them. And of course many printers don’t deal with the sort of customer details involved in a supermarket loyalty card voucher mail-out, say, and certainly don’t process highly sensitive jobs. But with stories about personal data being sold on eBay and to international call centres proliferating in the media at an alarming rate, they may well need to consider the implications of branching into B2C work and holding customer credit card details.
Parkin would add that any print business, even if not in the B2C arena, still necessarily holds data sensitive enough they wouldn’t want it to fall into, or be seized by, the wrong hands. "Any business holds things like staff details. I would suggest going for one of the security assessments, like ISO 27001, because that does bring up lots of issues; I would recommend this as a way of ensuring you’re addressing general security issues," he says.
And in fact a rigorously protected premises, doesn’t actually have to cost the earth. "Technology has moved on an awful lot and in most cases it’s not unreasonably expensive," reports Susan Ashton, head of information security at Communisis. "One of the good things about this is you can now move the technology round as you need it very easily. It’s not like 10 or 15 years ago where it was all very fixed so you couldn’t adapt the technology to suit the business as it changed."
"You can get a CCTV camera system for just a few hundred pounds these days," agrees Parkin.
And yet even a few hundred pounds won’t be money well spent unless this genuinely helps protect a company. Before any measures are decided upon, a thorough evaluation of just what risks a particular business is exposed to is needed.
"It really boils down to a risk assessment to see what’s fit for purpose for the kind of building you’ve got and the kind of data you’re working with," says James Matchett, business improvement manager at GI Solutions. "If you don’t do that you can potentially waste money and not necessarily make yourself any more secure."
Aron Priest, chief executive and co-founder of Solopress, recommends that printers seek out professional advice at this stage. "We run regular appraisals of our security needs, bringing in professional security companies for their help and advice," he reports.
"There are companies out there that could do it themselves, but for most people they may not understand the full spectrum of what may affect the business," agrees Matchett. "If they don’t have anyone in the company with that kind of background, I think it would be helpful to speak to a professional."
First steps
But just what sort of measures are such professionals likely to recommend? Of course, the good old CCTV camera is inevitably the first tool that springs to mind, and this certainly isn’t a bad place to start. Thamesdown’s Parkin would recommend printers invest in a reliable and well-known brand, such as Sony, and opt for a system with night vision.
One of the many measures Regan has now taken to up the security ante, has been to not only get more cameras but link these to his iPhone. "That let’s me know on my phone if there’s any movement in the factory," he says.
But there is a limit to CCTV’s effectiveness, says Matchett. For larger premises like GI’s, and particularly those processing sensitive data, he would recommend a swipe card system. "CCTV is only reliable in terms of being able to go back – you have to ask yourself how you’re going to view a whole day’s worth of footage. Having an audit trail allows you to skip to certain bits," he says.
This system can be synched, as in Thamesdown’s case, to the company providing it, who will alert bosses to anyone accessing the factory out of stipulated hours, says Parkin.
Another handy bit of gadgetry printers might want to consider is number plate recognition, says Communisis’ Ashton. "That’s a really useful tool if you have a car park that you need to monitor. CCTV takes an image of the number and runs this through a database of authorized cars that can come onsite. And systems have come down in price dramatically," she says.
And yet, more affordable as they now are, these sorts of systems will still be well beyond the budgets of many small printers. "They are expensive, it’s tens of thousands for those doors," concedes Matchett. The good news is that much cheaper measures can be just effective when it comes to protecting a company’s assets and reputation.
One of the most important things to get right is staff training, says Matchett. "Some of our solutions haven’t cost very much at all; data protection training hasn’t cost a lot," he says, adding: "Staff are the central part of our security system. On the first day they have an induction, then we get people to sign confidentiality and unacceptable use agreements, then we’ll have regular awareness sessions."
Ashton adds that a formal registration process at reception is a highly effective measure. And Regan and Parkin point out that the type of kit invested in can reduce the likelihood of valuable assets being lost in the event of a break-in.
"We changed the model of the business. Rather than leaving highly desirable Apple Macs around, we’ve moved to more portable systems that we can take home at night so we’re not leaving desirable goods," says Regan.
On how Thamesdown protects customer data, Parkin reports: "All our desktops are locked down so you can’t use USB drives or floppy disks to get anything off the computer."
But whether a printer follows suit by adopting these specific measures will of course depend on what’s appropriate for their particular business model. The size of the building, its layout, accessibility and location, whether it’s a 24/7 operation and what sorts of jobs are being printed will all dictate the systems chosen.
Whatever combination of cameras, gates and doors and perhaps even professional security personnel is needed, one thing is for sure: with data crime on the rise and break-ins still a very real risk, business security is still a matter deserving real, considered thought.
