While the school and college corridors are bustling with students and teachers during the week and during school term, the weekends and holidays leave an empty and vulnerable building, full of valuable equipment such as computer, tablets and other electronic devices. Theft of essential devices can be devastating to not just the educational institutions themselves, but the pupils learning development too. In addition, other valuable items such as gardening equipment and tools are prime targets.

Protecting such large sites is not an easy task by any means. Outside of hours and when schools are closed during holidays, educational facilities in Ireland are constantly on the radar of opportunistic criminals, as well as those who will choose to engage in anti-social behaviour such as vandalism or even arson. Another big concern for schools is in relation to GDPR. A lot of personal and sensitive information is stored within the school offices as well as state examination papers which are also stored on site around exam time.

According to our latest crime statistics, the weekends is when incidents are most likely to occur between 6pm and midnight. Further Education Institutions such as colleges, technology institutes & universities are at risk from such threats also.

How Can Schools, Colleges & Universities Protect Against Intruders?

As a global leader in proactive video monitoring (PVM) with a strong Irish presence, Netwatch work across a range of sectors, protecting over 250,000 sites, helping them to proactively optimise their security to protect their people, premises and assets from burglary, theft and criminal damage.

There are many considerations when it comes to choosing the right CCTV solution for an educational institution. Many such institutions adopt a more traditional approach and have security guards protecting their premises. Whilst there are many advantages to having a physical presence on-site, there are also some disadvantages, for more on this, take a look at this article.

If you are considering a CCTV system, you then might be asking what is proactive video monitoring and why choose it over traditional video surveillance? The term Proactive Video Monitoring, PVM for short, is a term you may have heard of in recent years. It is essentially technology that enables video surveillance systems to intelligently assess an environment and notify the monitoring centre of an intrusion.

The technology draws immediate attention to unauthorised activity, allowing your provider to intervene and notify local authorities before a crime has a chance to occur. In contrast, traditional means of video surveillance only cater for investigations after the crime has occurred, in many cases having costly consequences. In short, proactive video monitoring is about preventing crimes, whereas traditional video surveillance is reactive and can only help solve crimes after the fact.

Are you ready to protect your educational institution with our industry-leading technology? If so, then it’s time to talk to one of our security experts today. Click here and complete the short contact form.