Security Guards vs Remote Monitoring For Warehouses

Warehouses are awkward sites to protect.

Multiple access points, your stock is often valuable and easy to move, your site rarely – if ever – shuts completely, you have strict safety compliance rules to handle and your yard is usually too big to watch from any single point.

So your choice between security guards vs remote monitoring, and how you split your warehouse security between them, can have a pretty big impact when it comes to where the risks are, or when you’re most exposed.

It’s also a hard call to make.

Much of the advice you’ll find comes from specialist providers that sell individual services and frame it all as “this vs that”, which can make everything more confusing than it needs to be.

This guide should make it clearer how security guards and remote monitoring can protect your warehouse.

How Security Guards & Remote Monitoring Work At A Warehouse

Security guards usually work in one of two ways in warehouses.

Static officers work at your gatehouse, reception or goods in, checking drivers and managing visitor movements, while mobile patrol officers walk your yard and the building on a set route, looking for suspicious activity or signs of a break-in or tampering to perimeter fences or cameras.

One thing to note, any security guard supplied under contract needs an SIA licence.

And the company supplying them should hold SIA Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS) status.

With remote CCTV, things work a bit differently.

Cameras and detectors on your site connect to a professional monitoring centre (alarm signals often pass through an alarm receiving centre, or ARC, first), where operators respond to alerts.

When something triggers, an operator checks your live CCTV footage and decides whether it’s a real incident or a false alarm. If it’s genuine, they’ll issue an audio warning through on-site speakers where fitted and, if that doesn’t work, escalate to a mobile response officer, your keyholder or the police.

One centre can watch a large site, or multiple locations, at once.

At ProFM Group, our National Operations Centre (NOC) can watch over one large site, or multiple sites with connected systems 24/7/365.

It’s staffed by SIA-licensed operators delivering alarm and CCTV monitoring. AI-assisted detection can help them separate genuine activity from false alarms caused by headlights or bad weather, provided it’s set up and tested for your site.

Just remember, what neither of these does on their own is necessarily stop crimes from happening.

Cameras and deter and record activity and guards are a deterrent, or can de-escalate situations in real time.

The advantage guards have is they have the judgement of experienced security personnel and can actively deal with situations and escalate issues as needed.

Comparisons For Warehouse Guards & Remote Monitoring

These are six questions warehouse managers commonly weigh up when comparing guards and remote monitoring.

Which Is Better At Protecting Your Yard And Perimeter?

For a large yard or long fence line, remote monitoring usually does the better job out of hours.

A patrolling security guard can only be in one place, so every patrol leaves gaps between rounds. Cameras watch every zone at once.

But cameras need the basics in place, like a reliable power supply, a stable connection back to a monitoring centre like our NOC and positions that capture faces and number plates, not just movement.

An overflow trailer park at the edge of a site may have no power or network connection, poor lighting makes it even harder. Even where cameras are in, power outages or a dropped connection can leave one blind – and unnoticed – unless the security system reports its own faults.

“A camera that provides a wide view of a yard may show that something is happening without capturing enough detail to identify the people or vehicles involved.”

A security guard is better where you need deterrence at one point, like a gatehouse.

In our experience, a visible officer at the main gate changes how your site looks to potential intruders more than a camera on a pole.

Which Handles Deliveries, Drivers And Goods In Better?

This is where a security guard is hardest to replace.

Checking a driver’s identity, matching a collection reference against your bookings and refusing unauthorised entry when the paperwork doesn’t add up all need a person at the gate, working to access control systems procedure, agreed with your warehouse ops team.

Fake drops and collections quickly highlight the importance of this manned presence.

Someone turns up with false credentials or an unauthorised vehicle – sometimes with paperwork that looks right at a glance – and the load leaves in a way that happens dozens of times that day.

Only trained officers, following your verification procedure at the point someone or something can be stopped, can stop these types of incidents from happening, backed by a reliable booking or dispatch system.

We’d argue that’s the strongest case for gatehouse security on any busy site.

It’s also a real example of our work with Lloyd’s Transport.

At their bonded warehouse in Tamworth, our security personnel provide round-the-clock gatehouse security, checking in every delivery against Lloyd’s own procedures and logging who’s on site and what they’re bringing in or out.

Which Responds Faster When Something Happens?

An on-site guard means you can respond to an incident immediately. No remote-only option can do that.

But it also depends on how many guards you have. One person manning a gatehouse on their own immediately leaves a gap in your security if they leave their post to check an alarm on the yard.

Remote CCTV monitoring detects and challenges faster, since operators can verify suspicious activity and issue an audio warning within seconds.

What they can’t do is respond physically.

When a security incident happens, getting someone on site depends on whoever your alarm response arrangement sends – a mobile officer, or a guard already on site – rather than on the operator.

Police attendance isn’t guaranteed either, since it depends on available resources and whether your system meets the national police requirements for response to security systems.

Which Is The Cheaper Option?

We can’t really compare like for like because how contracts are put together is so different.

Manned guarding is priced on hours and officers.

Cover a single gate from 6am to 10pm on weekdays and you’re paying for those hours, round-the-clock protection across a whole site puts your cost up as you add more guards.

Remote monitoring services are usually an installation (unless you already have suitable cameras and connectivity to support them) plus an ongoing monitoring charge. There can also be an additional fee for response call-outs.

That makes them cost-effective for long, quiet hours across large areas, but less so if you’d need new equipment or alarm activations keep triggering call-outs.

“Don’t remove a guard until you can demonstrate how every essential function they perform will be covered.”

Being honest, the more useful comparison is what each option costs for the specific hours and areas you need covering, against what an incident would cost if equipment was stolen or damaged.

Which Do Insurance Companies Prefer?

Neither, as a general rule.

Your insurer’s policy wording decides this, and it can set specific security conditions. Aviva’s freight policy wording, for example, requires prior written agreement before you change alarm, signalling or response arrangements.

An excise warehouse may also have site-specific HMRC approval conditions to check. Lloyd’s Transport, for instance, needed security that would help them maintain their bonded warehouse certifications.

Customers storing valuable assets with you may set their own specific security requirements too, sometimes by asking for certification to the Transported Asset Protection Association’s Facility Security Requirements (TAPA FSR).

We’d advise checking all three before you change anything.

Don’t assume moving from one to another will lower your premiums. If anything, you just risk voiding any cover you’ve got if your insurance provider has placed restrictions on you.

Which Copes Better With Peak Season And Changing Hours?

Both can scale effectively to match your requirements, just in different ways.

Guard hours can be added at short notice for peak season (the run-up to Christmas being the obvious one), when you’re bringing in agency workers and pushing more vehicles through your gate during busy loading periods.

Remote monitoring services scale on the space they can cover rather than hours.

If you take on an overflow yard or a temporary park, CCTV towers can be monitored by the same operators as your fixed cameras, without waiting for a permanent installation.

They can then come off your site once the peak season passes.

That can be a more cost effective way to cover space you’ll only use for a few months.

The thing to be careful of is leaning too far towards one service without an assessment. More traffic usually means more checks coming through your gate (which is a manned guarding problem) and isn’t just more cameras watching your yard.

Why Most Warehouses Need Guarding And Monitoring

Guards are strongest when you need someone to make a decision while your site is operating, whereas remote monitoring works well across the hours and areas nobody is watching, backed by alarm response for anything that needs dealing with in person.

So rather than choosing one option for your whole site, map it by area and hour.

How you create that split depends on what’s going on with your warehouse:

• What hours does your site operate, and how does that change through the year?
• How many access points does your site have, and how much traffic comes through the gatehouse?
• What’s your stock value, and how quickly could it be moved?
• Is there reliable power and connectivity across your yard?
• What do your insurer and customers require?
• Who attends an alarm, and how quickly?

The security measures that sit around both (lighting, fencing, access control systems and staff procedures) matter just as much to keeping your warehouse secure.

Joined-Up Warehouse Security From ProFM Group

Many warehouses are better protected by a mix of on-site guards and remote monitoring, but only when procedures are followed and you have one point of oversight, like our NOC.

We’re an SIA Approved Contractor and hold NSI Gold approval for designing, installing and maintaining CCTV, access control and intruder alarm systems.

Alongside our gatehouse team at Lloyd’s Transport, we’ve provided 24/7 CCTV monitoring, keyholding and alarm response for Dennis Eagle’s Blackpool facility since 2017.

If you’d like to talk through the right warehouse security split for your site, call our team on 0808 501 5332 or get in touch online for a free, no-obligation quote.