While places of worship have been known as always open and welcoming havens for those who visit, whether to practice their religious spirituals, get support and guidance from the relevant people or attend certain events and ceremonies, these places including churches, mosques and synagogues are now being treated as high risk locations. Since bombings, theft and active mass shootings are becoming frequently reported at different places of worship worldwide, these places are becoming increasingly more challenging to secure.
Some of these tragedies include New Zealand’s mosque shooting in Christchurch earlier in 2019 where more than 50 lost their lives, Texas church mass shooting in 2017 where 26 people were killed, and the twin suicide bombings that took place at St. George’s Church in the northern Egyptian city of Tanta on a Palm Sunday, seeing more than 45 people losing their lives. The full list of these types of attacks is much longer, and presents an alarming trend of violence against religious people and their place of worship.
Many Australian houses of worship are already taking the initiatives for planning and implementing optimal security systems to protect their people, buildings and important assets. But where does the journey start and who is the best to secure your place of worship?
At Ryalex, being one of the leading commercial security companies in Australia, we have designed our methodology to first identify and assess the security risks in order to put the best plan forward. When assets, threats and hazards are identified, our security professionals will determine the levels of undesirable consequences to choose the best and most cost-effective security systems to mitigate the risks.
A basic form of security is always to control the access of the visitors and workers where possible. While this may be hard to implement in an open place, options are available using a combination of a commercial access control system and operational procedures. Video surveillance as well intercoms are also great to handle visitors and record these via CCTV technology to be able to monitor and spot any unauthorised access. This also includes surroundings and parking lots, where commercial security cameras can be the first line of defence during an emergency. Vandalism can be avoided by use of advanced sensors at the various points of entry with combination of 24/7 alarm monitoring.
Ryalex Security have been working with various business and houses of worship where our security specialists have addressed the potential threats addressed to each premises. While violent attacks cannot always be prevented, implementation of appropriate measures will assist with reducing the likelihood of attacks occurring and will assist police with their investigations to prevent them happening again.
If you are looking for an effective security system for a place of worship, contact the team at Ryalex Security today.