6 Ways to Extend the Life of Your Business's Security System(s)
Clean your cameras
While how often you should clean your cameras can vary depending on your industry, every business should make the investment of having their cameras cleaned. We recommend restaurants have their cameras cleaned quarterly to avoid grease buildup. Other businesses such as retail, banks, etc. should have their cameras cleaned bi-annually.
Camera angles matter because a camera that isn’t pointing at what it was originally can be as useful as a camera with no power.
**Bonus** If you’re in the restaurant business, we recommend not using domed cameras which collect grease and residue significantly easier than
2. Avoid air vents & fryers
Do not allow the security company installing your cameras to place them above air vents or fryers. We recommend this regardless of your industry, but especially if you’re a restaurant. Water and electronics have never gone well together. Depending on your climate, condensation can form around air ducts, especially if you’re in a high humidity part of the country. We want to eliminate the possibility of water dripping onto your cameras every chance you get.
In restaurant settings, as the air circulates, the contaminants in the air get stuck to the lens of your cameras. This is unavoidable to a certain degree in the restaurant industry, however, this coupled with your quarterly cameras extends the life of your cameras.
3. Waterproof cameras
Our company chooses to install waterproof cameras in every setting, but this is especially important for restaurants. Grease and moisture always can seep into anywhere eventually, but with waterproof cameras in every situation, you can add months and even years onto the life of your system.
4. Exterminators are your friends
Regardless of your industry, protecting your property against insects and rodents with regular treatments for pests is a great routine. Rodents can chew through wiring, while insects can make it into your cameras and begin to block your viewing.
5. Checklists
We recommend creating a weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. checklist for your AP managers, district managers, store managers or anyone who will be associated with your security. At the top of that list should be testing your burglar alarms. Ensuring that the equipment you have is operational we understand is elementary, but we’ve had too many conversations with potentials customers who didn’t capture an important event because their equipment wasn’t being monitored correctly.
6. Health Monitoring
Is someone systematically ensuring that all of your equipment is operational? If so, that’s great. Now are they not only making sure that there is power to the camera and NVR, but ensuring that the integrity of the footage, the angle of the cameras or no items are blocking the lens? Even better. It can be so tedious working through each camera each week, but having a stocker place a box in front of a camera because there was nowhere else to place it, is as good to you as having no power to the camera (we wish this wasn’t a true story a partner shared with us before having health monitoring).
Your security bonus tip:
Be mindful about decorations around holidays for two reasons:
Decorations are a fun idea but when your cameras are the only thing to hang items on, angles get changed or even block viewership.
Balloons can trip motion sensors leading to increased false alarm claims.
