New Year Security Checklist for Memphis Businesses

January is always a reality check. The holidays are over, staff is back, and if you're being honest with yourself, you probably let a few security habits slide in December. Maybe some former employees still have building access codes. Maybe the parking lot lights on the east side of your building burned out in November and nobody replaced them. These things happen, and the new year is the right time to fix them.

I've been in security operations for over fifteen years, and I can tell you that the businesses that get hit hardest are the ones that treat security as a set-it-and-forget-it system. They install a camera, maybe hire a patrol service, and then assume nothing changes. But your business changes. Your staff changes. Your risk profile changes. That's why we recommend a formal review every January.

Start with Access Control

The first thing we do when we walk a property in early January is audit who has keys, fobs, access codes, and alarm credentials. After the holiday season, you've likely had temporary staff, vendors, and contractors on-site. Some of those people shouldn't still have access, but they often do. Run your access log from the past sixty days. Look for anomalies: entries after business hours, repeated failed attempts, doors propped open during shift changes.

If you're in East Memphis or along the Poplar Ave corridor where office parks are dense, tailgating is a real threat. One person with a badge opens a door, and two or three people walk in behind them. Simple policy changes, combined with a guard stationed at entry points during high-traffic hours, close that gap fast.

Walk the Perimeter Yourself

Don't rely entirely on reports. Walk the full perimeter of your property in January daylight and then again after dark. You're looking for broken fencing, dead lighting zones, overgrown landscaping that creates hiding spots, and blind corners that your cameras don't cover. Note every issue. Then prioritize by likelihood of exploitation, not by cost to fix.

Parking areas deserve special attention. We've seen incidents in Midtown and the Medical District where the actual breach didn't happen at the building entrance. It happened in the parking lot at 6:45 in the morning, before most staff arrived. Lighting and signage in your parking areas matter more than most business owners realize. Our commercial patrol services include regular lot sweeps precisely because that's where problems often start.

Review Your Guard Coverage Schedule

If you have a contracted security service, January is the time to review the coverage schedule against your actual operational hours. Did your business hours change? Did you add a second shift? Are there gaps between when your last employee leaves and when the overnight patrol begins? These windows are well-known to people who case properties.

Sit down with your security provider and go through the post orders line by line. Post orders are the written instructions that tell your security officers exactly what to do on a given property. If yours haven't been updated in the past year, they're probably outdated. We update post orders for every client whenever there's a significant change to operations, staffing, or facility layout. Learn more about how we structure this through our security officers program.

Test Your Alarm Systems

Call your alarm monitoring company and request a test. Check that all zones are active. Verify the call list is current, because employee turnover during the holiday season often leaves outdated names on emergency contact rosters. If your system is more than five years old, ask your provider about upgrade options.

Also test your fire suppression systems, emergency lighting, and exit signage. These aren't strictly security issues, but they affect how an incident plays out if one occurs. An emergency exit that's blocked by holiday shipment overflow is a problem that should've been caught in December but probably wasn't.

Brief Your Staff

Security systems are only as good as the people operating around them. Take thirty minutes in the first week of January to remind your staff of your visitor management policy, your procedure for suspicious persons, and who to call if they observe something out of place. Keep it short. Make it practical. People remember specific scenarios better than general policies.

Memphis businesses of all sizes benefit from this kind of annual reset. Whether you're running a retail strip on Summer Ave, a warehouse near the I-40 corridor, or a professional office in Germantown, the fundamentals are the same: know who has access, light your property well, keep your team informed, and work with a security partner who actually knows your site.

Ready to start your 2024 security review? Call us at (202) 222-2225 or contact us online to schedule a free walkthrough assessment. We cover Memphis and the surrounding Shelby County area.