Sector
Banking & financial
A branch is not one site. It is forty sites with one name on them, and the system in each was installed by whoever won that year's tender. We design and maintain security across branch estates, back offices and currency operations in Mumbai, specified against what an inspection actually asks for.
A bank’s security problem is almost never one branch. It is two hundred branches specified by different vendors over fifteen years, at inconsistent standards, and the branch you will be asked about is the one that failed. We standardise security across branch estates so that every site answers the same question the same way.
What actually goes wrong
Every branch works. The estate does not.
| What fails | Why it fails | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Every branch is a different system | Installed branch by branch, tender by tender, over fifteen years. | Nobody can answer a question about the estate. Every question becomes forty phone calls. |
| Retention differs branch to branch | Set by whoever commissioned that branch, never standardised. | Head office believes it is ninety days everywhere. At some branches it is under twenty. |
| Nobody knows which branches are down | No central health monitoring, so a failure is reported by the branch manager or not at all. | A branch has been recording nothing for weeks and the first anyone hears is when footage is requested. |
| Cash-handling areas covered from the wrong angle | Cameras positioned when the branch was laid out differently. | Coverage of the counter. None of the actual transfer. |
| Access logs and camera clocks disagree | Separate systems, never synchronised. | Two records of the same event that appear minutes apart. Neither can be relied on. |
| The audit finding is the first anyone hears | Nobody checks the system until somebody official does. | You learn your position from the person least helpful to learn it from. |
The question nobody asks until an inspection
When the inspection asks for footage from a specific branch on a specific date, how long does it take?
Not whether you have cameras. Every branch has cameras. The question is whether the branch that matters was recording that week, whether anybody can retrieve it without visiting, and whether the record you hand over agrees with your own access logs.
An audit finding on security systems does not stay with the security systems. It lands on a named person, in a report that circulates upward, and the finding is almost never there was no system. It is the system did not produce what was asked for.
Check what my estate actually holdsWhat we carry here
- Surveillance
- Counter, cash handling, ATM lobby, entry and rear access
- Retention standardised across the estate, not per branch
- Health monitored centrally, so a failure is known before it is needed
- Access control
- Branch, back office, strongroom and server as separate zones
- Dual control where the operation or the policy requires it
- Records that survive an audit, retained and retrievable
- Intrusion & hold-up
- After-hours detection, safe and strongroom protection
- Hold-up devices connected to a defined receiving station and tested on schedule
- Not a button on a wall that nobody has pressed since handover
- Fire & life safety
- Detection appropriate to a branch that holds records and cash
- Interlocks that release the doors and recall the lifts
- Documented for the inspection, not just installed for it
Building management and AV are not part of a standard branch specification.
The same six stages
A branch is a small building with a large obligation.
- 01 Outside the gate Usually a street, sometimes an ATM lobby open all night. The approach is where a branch is most exposed and least covered.
- 02 Entry One controlled door for staff, one uncontrolled for customers, and a rear route for cash and deliveries that is usually the weakest of the three.
- 03 Inside the building Counter to cash room to strongroom. Short distances, which is why coverage gaps here are unforgivable rather than understandable.
- 04 Who goes where Who may be in the cash room, with whom, at what hours. This is the record the inspection asks for and it is usually the one nobody configured.
- 05 Work areas Detection, hold-up devices, and a fire strategy for a building that holds records which cannot be reprinted.
- 06 Control room Usually not a room. Usually a recorder in the back office and a head-office team who cannot reach forty of them.
Proof
Three estates, three problems.
We do not publish our clients' names in this sector, and we will not publish yours.
Year seven
A branch estate does not fail. It drifts, one branch at a time.
Nothing goes wrong across the estate at once. One branch is refitted and two cameras move. Another changes its opening hours and the schedule is never updated. A third has a drive fail and the local vendor replaces it with a smaller one because that is what he had.
Head office still believes the estate is standardised, because it was on the day it was commissioned. Every year it is a little less true, and there is no single moment at which anybody notices.
The estate is only ever as good as the branch you have not visited.
Find out what your estate is actually holding.
We test every camera, recorder, reader and hold-up device across the branches you nominate, verify retention against what is claimed, and give you a signed condition report per site.
The assessment is chargeable, quoted against the site, and adjusted in full against the first year if you take cover. Where cover is not taken, the fee covers our team’s time on site and the report we leave behind, and the report is yours either way.
Chargeable, and adjusted in full if you take cover.
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