Automatic gates for driveways are a popular option among people who want to enhance the security of their homes. They make sure that small children and pets stay safely within your property while keeping uninvited people and their vehicles out.
Apart from controlling access to your property, automatic gates for driveways can keep your home more secure in the following ways:
Ensuring Privacy
Depending on their height and design, automatic gates can shield your property from the prying eyes of curious neighbors and peeping Toms. They can also keep expensive items, such as luxury cars, hidden from unsavory characters as well as passers-by.
Preventing Burglaries
According to data from the FBI, burglary is among the most common forms of property crime in the US.
Burglars often case a house before trying to break in, so they can identify any vulnerabilities and security features that could put them at risk of discovery. They prefer homes with good accessibility, few or no security devices, and weak entry points.
An imposing automatic driveway gate made of heavy-duty materials can put off would-be burglars, as climbing over it or breaking it open takes too much time and effort. It also makes a lot of noise, which can alert neighbors.
How to Improve Your Automatic Gate’s Security
While automatic driveway gates are resilient and designed to enhance home security, they can be compromised. Here are some common ways an automatic gate can be breached and how to prevent them.
Power Issues
A power outage, or an intruder cutting the power, can prevent your automatic gate from closing or staying closed. For this reason, it’s important to have a backup power source and surge protector.
Brute Force
Ramming a gate with a heavy object such as a vehicle can cause its hinges or lock to break apart. To prevent this, choose a solidly constructed gate and install an additional lock—preferably an electric lock or magnetic one. Regular inspections and maintenance of the hinges can also help keep your gate resilient to brute force attacks.
If you have high-security requirements, a sliding gate is a better choice than a swinging gate. A sliding gate must be pushed off its track to be compromised—an extremely difficult task.
Additional security features such as retractable bollards behind your gate can also help prevent breaches from brute force attacks.
Hacking
In the old days, automatic gate remotes worked by transmitting a code to the gate receiver, which would then unlock it. However, this was not a very secure method, as anyone with the right tools could pick up the code and use it to unlock the gate.
Modern automatic gates come with a rolling or hopping code, an encryption system used in keyless entry devices like car remotes. With rolling codes, your gate remote creates a new code each time it’s used, making it difficult, if not impossible, to capture and replicate.
If you have an old automatic gate, consider having an automatic gate company check if it uses a fixed code or the new rolling code system. If it uses the former, it would be best to replace your gate with a newer one with better security features.
Another option is to install an intercom so that visitors would have to call up to your house, and you’d manually allow them entry by pressing a button.
Turn to the Experts in Automatic Gate Installation & Repair
Automatic gates are a worthwhile investment for homeowners who want to keep their property and loved ones safe from outside threats. While there are some vulnerabilities in automatic gates, these can be quickly addressed through proper maintenance and upgrades.