Can Any Safe Be Cracked?

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There are plenty of films that glamorise safe crackers that claim to be able to crack any safe. We've all seen the movies where the crafty criminal sneaks into a casino safe room and cracks the code. But when this claim is made in real life can it really be true?

If you are the owner of a casino safe or any kind of safe, how can you be sure that your valuables are actually secure? This question is an important one; many of us keep some of our most sensitive treasures locked away. However, the answer to this question depends on a variety of factors:

Quality

Of course, the quality of a safe is a major factor in determining whether or not a particular safe can be cracked. Not only that, the type of safe you have and the worth of its contents can determine whether or not insurance will cover you if you get robbed. If you are keeping highly valuable objects in a low quality safe, then you shouldn’t be surprised when a thief cracks it and insurance doesn’t cover the stolen goods. One way to determine if a particular safe is a good enough quality for what you are using it for is to check it against the Eurograde system. This is a system that acts as the standard for designers and safe manufacturers to follow. The Eurograde system describes the recommended cash value or content value that a safe should hold. For instance, if a safe is Eurograde 1 then you should only keep up to £10,000 in cash or £100,000 worth of valuables. This doesn’t just help you understand the quality and security of a safe, it helps insurers determine whether or not they will reimburse you if contents are stolen. If £25,000 is taken from a Eurograde 1 safe, they may not cover all of your losses. If you are looking for a safe that is the most difficult to crack then Eurograde 6 is your best chance. As an example, the Chubbsafes Trident Eurograde 6 Size 310 would be very difficult to crack and can withstand even violent attempts to open it.

Type

Did you know that the type of safe you have is a large factor in its security? There are two major types of safes: fire safes and security safes. A quality security safe is designed to hold sensitive documents, cash or valuables and to protect them from human attacks. The goal for a security safe is to guard against potential lock manipulation, drilling and brute force. A fire safe (or fire resistant safe) is made for protecting your valuables from fire. Their goal is to maximize the amount of time a safe can be in a fire without the contents being destroyed. Fire safes are typically not designed with human attacks in mind and are generally recommended for use where security is not an issue. There are hybrid safes that are designed to be resistant to both.

Time

When given unlimited time and the right resources, any safe can be cracked. However, when a criminal is trying to crack a safe, time is not on their side. During a robbery an intruder has to be in and out before they are noticed, especially since safe cracking can be noisy. So a safe doesn’t need to be uncrackable it just needs to take a long time to crack and difficult to move. The longer your safe can withstand an attack the more like the attacker will give up or be caught.