Does your business use these?

Do you have high voltage and expensive equipment contained within expensive security hardware and then pop the key in one of these? Even if this isn’t in use, it’s piquing my interest, which is rarely a good thing.

Commercially, these kinds of “key safes” are good for one thing; honeypots. Pop one in a place nobody needs to linger, set up CCTV and a high priority alert for “person(s) in the key box zone for more than 20 seconds”. Ideally the box should contain a key that doesn’t work, but is helpfully labelled. It makes criminals easier to track down when you know where they are heading.

If you’re actually keeping real keys in these things in public areas; stop. Please. These boxes can be easily and quietly opened with unskilled, destructive attacks as well as covertly decoded in seconds. It’s all over YouTube and I see these boxes everywhere. For an application like in the photo, the availability of information on social media exposes it to the “curious teen” risk, which could be very bad indeed.

There are very few makes / models of key safe that I would actually advocate using for commercial purposes and, even then, only as a last resort.

(If you or people you know are using these for carer access for vulnerable people, you’re welcome contact me directly for advice on your specific situation or for a general information leaflet).