A few years ago, a good friend of mine was robbed. Yes, another robber story, but hey, that’s what happens in the security business. He lived in a double-storey townhouse that was not too far from where I lived at the time. He was quite upset when he rang me and really needed to have his door secured straight away. He also needed the house rekeyed because his key ring had been stolen. This might have been the most valuable thing the thieves had made away with because the burglar now had unlimited access to his car and his home.
I drove as quickly as I could and arrived at my friend’s home to find out that all the cash, jewellery and items that even insurance cannot replace were all gone. Papers, silver, coins, everything – the place had been picked clean. To be honest, my friend’s home had been an easy target. The back door had been easily jimmied. None of the doors had bolts and there was no alarm system.
I got the badly damaged front door fixed up well enough that it could be bolted and spent a while rekeying the entire house. I asked if the car keys or remote were missing and though he assured me they were not, he did confess that his spare set of house keys were gone. He kept them in a bowl in the kitchen! I held my breath, counted to ten and as calmly as I could told him in no uncertain terms that spare keys belong in a safe. A safe with a combination lock.
Shaking my head and mumbling a bit under my breath, I secured the home as best I could, rekeyed the locks and left him in the hands of the police. He was giving them his report and waiting for the insurance company to call as I walked out the door.
The next morning I got a phone call from my very same mate. Breathless, he began, “You’re not going to believe it. Around 2.00 am while fast asleep,” (his bedroom is on the second floor at the rear of the house), “I heard the roller door go up. I got to the blinds and opened them and saw someone opening my car door and jump in.” He finished the story, saying that before he could get downstairs to his car it was gone. Apparently, the previous day, the thieves had stolen the garage remote control and a spare set of car keys and he had not noticed, even though I had asked when he had confessed about the house keys.
But, there is a happy ending. My mate rang the police straight away to tell them what had happened and the burglar was caught driving my mate’s car early that same morning. They followed the not-smart-enough-burglar back to his house to find all my mate’s belongings, as well as lots of other stolen goods. Apparently, the thief had just been released from prison for similar crimes and seemed set on going right back in.
I certainly learned my lesson. When working with the victim of a burglary, give them what they need for future protection, not what they think they need. Check and recheck, no matter how annoyed the person you’re helping gets. Overprotect. That’s a good lesson for you, too. More is sometimes more!
When to Rekey
After a burglary has taken place is probably the nastiest time to rekey because it means you’ve been robbed. It’s also good to rekey if you’ve lost a set of keys, or even if you think you’ve lost them. We all misplace things. But if it’s keys and you’re not sure, better to be safe them sorry. Or let’s say a new worker has been to your house. Or perhaps a good friend is all of a sudden not a friend anymore. Take a look around. If it’s a key and you can’t find it, get rekeyed. As they say, an ounce of prevention!
Here’s another time to rekey your locks: when you move into a new home, whether you’ve bought or rented. People overlook this. Even if you’re purchasing a brand new home, or you’re the first renters in a newly-built apartment complex, someone has entered the premises before you. This may be the builder, an electrician, plumber, carpenter, etc. Yes, the builder (etc.) is probably reputable. But where has this person’s key ring been? Set down at a restaurant? Left in an unlocked car? You never know. So, the minute you sign on the dotted line, rekey everything. Rekeying is much less expensive than changing all the locks.
When people think about rekeying, they think about front door locks. Rekeying applies to windows and roller doors (such as garage doors). It also applies to things like remote controls. Finally, the term applies to car keys, and to key cards. If you want to take it to an extreme, a key is a physical code. You change your computer codes, don’t you? If not, you should. Do the same for your home, your business and your car. It is better to do it more often than less. Keys and cards are not expensive. What’s inside of what they grant access to is.
In terms of business applications, you may be concerned that rekeying all the time is a hassle and you may lose track of all the different employees with different keys. There is a way of minimising rekeying every time a staff member leaves. To do this, put all the locks on a restricted keyway.
This helps in four ways. First, restricted keys can only be cut by the locksmith who has put the restricted system in place. No other locksmith can cut keys for the system or rekey the locks.
Second, when you implement a restricted keyway system you must, then and there, decide on signatories. The signatory is you and whomever else you designate to authorize to cut a new key. You sign at the time the system is set up. This stops staff or non-authorized people from getting keys cut. No matching signature, no key.
The third benefit of a restricted keyway is how it is put together. It’s a very tight lock that is hard to pick. Also, it is almost impossible for anyone other than the person who created it to gain entry without a key. For the curious, here’s how taking one of these locks apart and rekeying it is done.
Here’s the first part of the procedure, where your locksmith physically pulls the lock apart. The little bumps on the left hand side of the picture are pins and your locksmith replaces these to create a new key combination. In order to do this, he uses a new physical key.
After the pins are realigned, the barrel is put back into the lock. Your locksmith tests the key that he used to realign the pins, and now you have a newly keyed lock and corresponding key.
The fourth benefit of restricted keying is fairly straightforward. With a restricted key system you can create a master key that allows access throughout a home or building and have other keys created that only allow entry to specific rooms or areas. Replacement keys are very expensive, so this may not be an ideal solution for commercial environments with high turnover rates. However, if a system that relies on electricity or battery backup is not appropriate, this is a great alternative.