A recent piece from Urban Protection Group on strata building security risks is a useful reminder for NSW property managers and owners corporations: the biggest vulnerabilities in apartment buildings and mixed-use strata schemes are rarely dramatic break-ins. They are the slow accumulation of small operational gaps — a door propped open, an access card never deactivated, a CCTV system nobody actually reviews. For strata committees and building managers who commission and maintain these systems, it is worth revisiting how well current practice matches the risks the article identifies.
The Risks That Rarely Make the Incident Report
The article highlights several familiar issues: tailgating at secure entries, parcel theft in shared lobbies and mailrooms, and inconsistent procedures for contractor and tradesperson access. None of these are new problems, but they are persistent ones, particularly in buildings with high resident turnover, short-term letting, or large delivery volumes. What is more interesting is the set of “hidden” blind spots the article calls out — the ones that tend to surface only after something has already gone wrong:
- Access credentials — fobs, cards, garage remotes — that are never deactivated when a resident moves out
- Doors propped open or visitors let in on trust rather than verified credentials
- Loitering in lobbies, car parks or shared amenity spaces that goes unreported
- CCTV that is recording but not actively monitored, so it only helps after the fact
- Basement car parks acting as a soft entry point into lifts and stairwells
Each of these is a process failure as much as a technology failure. A modern access control system can enforce anti-passback and log every credential use, but it cannot stop a resident holding a door for a stranger. Cameras can cover every square metre of a basement car park, but footage reviewed only after a complaint is lodged has already missed its chance to prevent the incident.
Operational Implications for Strata Committees
For strata managers and owners corporations, this translates into a few practical operational questions worth asking at the next committee meeting or building audit:
- Is there a documented, enforced process for deactivating access credentials when a lease ends, a unit is sold, or a contractor’s engagement finishes?
- Are visitor and contractor access procedures written down, or does building access depend on informal arrangements at the front desk?
- Does anyone actually review CCTV footage proactively, or does it only get pulled after an incident is reported?
- Is basement car park lighting and camera coverage adequate, and are pedestrian doors from the garage properly access-controlled rather than left on a mechanical latch?
- Has the building’s amenity mix changed — new EV chargers, a co-working space, a rooftop terrace — without a corresponding update to the access control and CCTV plan?
The article also touches on liability under the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act, which places a duty on owners corporations to keep common property reasonably safe. That duty does not require a “complex” security overhaul, but it does put a premium on being able to demonstrate that access control and CCTV coverage were reasonable and properly maintained at the time of an incident — not just installed years ago and left alone.
Mallen’s Take
Most of the risk in strata buildings we look at doesn’t come from undersized systems — it comes from systems that have quietly drifted out of alignment with how the building is actually used. Credential databases accumulate stale entries over years of tenant turnover. Camera coverage that made sense at handover no longer matches where the gym, parcel room or EV chargers ended up. Basement pedestrian doors get left on free-egress hardware because it’s convenient, undermining the access control plan entirely.
This is exactly the kind of drift that a periodic site audit is designed to catch — reviewing device registers, access credential lists, and CCTV coverage plans against current building layout and usage, rather than against the original design brief from years earlier. For strata committees weighing up whether their current security posture matches the risks in a growing, changing building, that kind of structured review is usually a more valuable first step than adding more cameras or doors.
Buildings with active access control and visitor management systems should also have a routine — not just a policy — for revoking credentials on move-out, and for auditing who currently holds active access. It’s a simple administrative task that closes one of the more common blind spots strata managers encounter.
Original source: https://www.urbanprotection.com.au/strata-building-security-risks/