How to Prevent Break-Ins at a Commercial Property

Almost every guide that ranks for this question is written for a house. A business is a different problem: it sits empty and dark for twelve hours a night, it often has a wall of glass facing the street, and its back door opens onto a laneway nobody watches.

This guide is about the building itself — the doors, frames, glass and closures that decide how long an opening takes to beat. It sits alongside, not instead of, the lighting, cameras and alarm monitoring every police service recommends.

Four decades of security closures and commercial doors for names Ontario knows — Canada’s Wonderland, Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, the LCBO, Metrolinx, Marriott & Hilton hotels, the University of Toronto — plus thousands of businesses across the GTA. Dependable people, quality products, since 1979.

How do you prevent break-ins at a business?

You prevent break-ins by making every opening slow and conspicuous to attack, and by making sure the time you buy ends in someone responding. In practice that means a barrier over the glass, solid doors and frames with locks that actually latch, lighting and clear sightlines, and cameras with a monitored alarm.

Crime-prevention people summarise it as four Ds: deter (look like a poor target), detect (be seen and recorded), delay (make it take time) and deny (keep them out of where they want to be). Doors, grilles and glass do most of the delaying and denying. They are only worth what the detection behind them is worth.

Where do intruders actually get into commercial buildings?

Through the easiest opening, which is rarely the front door. Walk the building at night and look at it the way a stranger would: which opening is dark, out of sight of the street and slow for anyone to notice?

• Storefront glass — the fastest way into a shop is through the display, not the lock.
• Back and side doors — a steel door on a laneway with a worn lock or a frame that has moved is the classic entry point, especially where it cannot be seen from any street.
• Loading and service openings — overhead doors left on a manual lock, dock doors, and man doors beside them.
• Ground-floor windows on the sides and back, particularly anything hidden by landscaping or bins.

Waterloo Regional Police's

business security checklist

asks exactly these questions: whether views of the property are obscured from the street, whether there are hiding spots by windows and doors, and whether entrances are well lit. A professional walk-through catches the ones staff stop seeing.

Which physical security measures work, and what does each one buy?

Each measure buys a different thing, and the right one depends on the opening. The table sets them side by side; the sections after it cover the ones people ask about most.

Security grilles and shutters

A grille or shutter turns a ten-second smash-and-grab into a job that needs tools, makes noise and takes long enough for a response to arrive. A

rolling security grille

keeps a storefront visible after hours; a

rolling security shutter

closes the opening off completely and also keeps weather out; a

folding grille or gate

goes where there is no room above the opening for a coil. Retractable closures are the reason security no longer has to mean bars across the display all day.

Window security bars

Fixed bars are the simplest and oldest answer, and they still work on the windows they suit: side and rear windows that never need to open and are never used as a way out. The common types are fixed bars anchored permanently into the frame or masonry, hinged bars that swing open from the inside, removable bars on locking brackets, and expandable bars that adjust to the opening. Decorative patterns exist if the frontage matters.

What matters more than the pattern is the anchoring. A bar screwed into a rotten wood sill or a hollow aluminum frame comes off with a pry bar. Bars should be fixed into structure — masonry, concrete or a steel frame — with fasteners that cannot be backed out from outside.

A barrier must never close off a required exit. Ontario's Building Code requires every exit door to open from the inside with no more than one releasing operation and without keys, special devices or specialized knowledge (OBC 3.4.6.16). Any grille, gate or bar on an exit route is settled at the survey, not after it is made.

Glass: laminated glass and security film

Storefront doors and much of the glass beside them are usually tempered, which is strong but breaks into small pieces that fall out of the frame. Laminated glass has a plastic interlayer that holds the broken pieces in place, so an intruder has to keep striking and tear through it before the opening is usable. Security film does a similar job on glass already in the frame; as the

overview of safety and security film

explains, how well it performs depends a lot on how it is attached at the edges. Both delay entry. Neither is burglar-proof, and nobody honest will tell you otherwise. For the difference in detail, see tempered vs laminated glass.

How do doors, frames and locks stop break-ins?

A door stops a break-in only as well as its weakest part, and on a commercial back door that is usually the frame or the strike, not the leaf. Intruders pry the door away from the frame until the latch clears, or they attack a worn cylinder.

• Steel door, steel frame. A hollow metal door in a properly anchored steel frame is the standard for back and service doors for a reason.
• Latch protection. An astragal or latch guard stops a bar being pushed into the gap at the latch.
• Hinges that cannot be removed from outside on out-swinging doors — security studs or non-removable pins.
• A lock that latches every time. A closer too weak to pull the door shut past its seal leaves the building open all night and nobody knows.
• Key control. Old keys in unknown hands are a vulnerability. Rekeying or a restricted keyway is less expensive than a break-in.

Electronic locks and access control add a record of who opened what and remove the lost-key problem; our guide to

electronic locks for commercial buildings

covers the options. We fit and repair the whole assembly — see commercial door hardware.

Do lighting, cameras and alarms still matter if the building is hardened?

Yes — they are what turn the time a barrier buys into an arrest or an abandoned attempt. A grille on a street-facing opening that nobody is watching is a hurdle, not a solution. Police guidance recommends reliable video surveillance, motion-activated lighting at dark entrances, and visible signage that cameras are on site and no cash is kept on the premises.

Visible cameras next to a solid grille or shutter send the clearest possible message that the building is a poor target. Keep the inside visible from the street where you can: a lit, visible sales floor behind a see-through grille is harder to work in unseen than a dark one behind paper.

What should you fix first?

Fix the opening that is easiest to attack and least visible, and fix it properly, before spending on the ones that are already hard. In most buildings the order is:

1. The back or side door — frame anchoring, latch protection, a lock and closer that work.
2. Ground-floor glass out of sight of the street — bars, a grille, laminated glass or film.
3. The storefront — a grille or shutter over the display after hours.
4. Lighting and cameras covering each of the above.
5. An alarm that someone actually answers.

Security closures are made to the measured opening, so plan on typically 4–6 weeks to produce once the shop drawings are approved, then 1–2 weeks to schedule and install. If a break-in happens in the meantime, the opening can be secured the same night with an

emergency board-up

and repaired properly afterwards. Our 24/7 line is 800-522-6825.

The full range of closures we make, fit and repair — every make, since 1979 — is on the security shutters and grilles page.