When a key is lost or stolen, you need to take action right away to keep your building secure. Rekeying and changing your locks are two similar options that you can use to secure your building in this situation and ensure that all employees can access the areas they need to go to in the course of their everyday work. As you are about to find out in this post, rekeyable door lock systems have many advantages, allowing you to avoid replacing hardware unless it is very worn out or you decide to switch to a different vendor. Let's take a look at the best practices for lock changes and rekeying to help you decide what is the best option for your business.
Rekey Locks Under These Circumstances
The number one situation that causes business owners to consider rekeying their locks is when they lose control of who has access to their business premises. For example, if there has been a change in staffing in your organization, you may worry that ex-employees still have copies of keys, which could be the original keys you provided or copies the employees have made for themselves. If any former employee holds a grudge against your business, they could potentially use their keys to gain access to the building, steal goods, or cause criminal damage, which could then lead to significant costs for your organization. You may find it difficult to file an insurance claim in this situation, as you gave the key to the employee who caused the damage. Rekeying your locks when a staff member leaves the organization can remove the risk of this situation arising and therefore give you peace of mind.
Lost keys are also a major concern for businesses that need to keep their physical premises secure, and they can also be a very common occurrence when you have multiple employees who all hold keys for your business premises. You never know whose hands a lost set of keys could end up in, so you need to act fast to rekey locks in this situation to ensure the security of your business.
Some locks allow you to rekey them yourself, simply by inserting a step change key and turning it 180 degrees to change the lock configuration. This very quick and easy procedure makes all previous keys unusable. If you already have these kinds of installed, rekeying is almost always a better option than replacing your locks, as it avoids the cost of calling out a locksmith and can usually be completed very quickly, therefore minimizing the time during which your business faces a security risk from lost or stolen keys. In most situations, you should use this convenient solution rather than changing your locks.
Change Locks Under These Circumstances
Despite the advantages of rekeying rather than replacing locks in most circumstances, there are certain situations when you will need to change your locks instead of simply rekeying them. For most businesses, the two situations that would cause them to change their locking system hardware include replacing worn out hardware and changing to a different security system or security vendor. In all other commercial and retail situations, there is simply no need to replace hardware.
A good reason to change your locks is worn out hardware. If the components of your lock are simply too worn to be rekeyed, you may need to replace your locks instead of rekeying them. When you replace your locks, consider installing units that have small format interchangeable cores (SFIC) to cut down on hardware replacement costs in the future. Using this kind of core allows you to change only the core of the lock, not the whole unit, when the locking mechanism begins to wear out.
Another good reason to change your locks is because you want to upgrade to a better security system. For example, you may want to upgrade from basic locks to a door lock system. This locking system provides features that allow business owners to conveniently manage all locks and keys. For example, InstaKey’s door lock system can include cloud-based software. When a key is lost or stolen, this kind of system makes it easy to rekey locks and reset keys held by employees, therefore ensuring the security of the property without business owners having to worry about disturbing the day to day running of the organization.
If you need more help in deciding whether to rekey or replace your locks, get in touch with InstaKey for more information. We can help you learn more about rekeyable lock technology and give you detailed advice about upgrading your business’s security with a better lock system. Explain your situation and find out whether you need to simply rekey your system or whether it is time to replace your hardware. Contact us today to find out how we can help.
