Security Perimeters: Tested Against Yesterday’s Threats

As lithium-ion battery technology puts professional-grade cutting capabilities into the hands of criminals for under £200, the gap between what certification assures and what real-world security demands has never been wider.

When talk turns towards physical security tests, LPS 1175 is, without question, one of the toughest. Under Issue 8, a product is assessed against a two-part rating: a letter from A to H denotes the toolkit used, while a number from one to 20 denotes the delay (in minutes) that it must realise against an attacker using that toolkit. However, the overwhelming majority of products (95% of them, in fact) submitted for certification fail on the very first attempt.

That’s genuinely rigorous, and none of what follows is meant to diminish it, but there’s merit in examining further what that covers, notably so in 2026.

The Loss Prevention Certification Board tests a single product – such as a gate, a fence panel, a shutter or a grille – in a controlled laboratory against a fixed toolkit for a fixed period. What that scenario doesn’t do is assess the perimeter as installed, which may be worn by years of use and attacked by someone who has done their homework rather than turned up cold.

Problem with the toolkit  

Every toolkit in the matrix is effectively a snapshot of what was available to criminals when the Loss Prevention Standard, or its most recent revision (Issue 8), was written in 2019.

Issue 8 exists due to the fact that Issue 7, itself scripted and published back in 2010, dealt with toolkits that had fallen behind the cordless and battery-powered tools that were then actually turning up at site perimeters. Issue 8 represented a genuine improvement, but standards are invariably backward-looking, while the toolkits and the criminals have moved on somewhat.

Enter lithium-ion battery technology, where we see a cordless angle grinder that once needed a mains electricity supply for operation now fitting in a rucksack. These tools can be bought on the High Street for well under the £200 mark. That’s not what Issue 8 of LPS 1175 had in mind seven years ago.

The challenge for security standards is that criminal capability can evolve almost immediately, while formal testing standards move through a longer cycle of consultation, validation and revision.

Police investigations into commercial burglaries are increasingly referencing portable angle grinders being used to break perimeter security. In January this year, Hampshire Police reported that offenders had used an angle grinder to force entry through fencing at a business premises in Eastleigh before stealing six micro excavators.

Likewise, Avon and Somerset Police now specifically warns construction businesses that the increased availability of battery-powered cordless angle grinders is contributing to more attempts by criminals to break through site security measures, among them locks and storage units.

Rising crime

This aligns with BauWatch’s 2025 crime report, which found that two-thirds of construction and infrastructure professionals had seen crime rise on their sites, with small tools and power tools the most commonly stolen category, costing the industry close to £100 million per annum.

A product holding an LPS 1175 rating tells you that specific item, tested in isolation, met a specific level. The standard evaluates the product as a whole, including hardware and fixings, but that assessment stops at the edge of the tested unit. Everything else – ie specification, installation and how the layers interact – is down to whomever built the perimeter. To me, that suggests a brilliant product badly integrated is not going to make a brilliant perimeter.

Delay, detection and response 

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not against certification. I’m just arguing that certification doesn’t solve the whole problem as the whole answer. Delay is only part of the equation alongside detection and response, while a perimeter is only as good as its weakest link.

A barrier delivering a ten-minute delay is worth little if nobody notices the attack until minute eight, and worth less still if the response takes 15 minutes to arrive. Experience shows that deterrence comes from convincing an attacker that risk and effort outweigh reward.

Where, then, does that leave the individual who’s specifying a perimeter? They need to ask a different question. Not: ‘What rating does this product hold?’, but instead: ‘Will this perimeter, as specified and installed, actually stop or delay the attempted attack given the tools realistically available today?’ That’s a much harder question and has no tidy answer printed on a certificate.

What’s required is an honest conversation about current toolkits rather than historic ones, the perimeter as an installed system rather than a catalogue of certified parts and detection and response as genuine partners to delay.

LPS 1175 remains the best tool we have for benchmarking product performance and I would never advise a client to specify against anything less. However, ratings are currently set against yesterday’s threats. Those intent on gaining entry now have a whole new set of tools in their armoury.

Richard Hilson is Director of Sales and Marketing at Parking Facilities Limited (PFL) Access Management (www.parkingfacilities.co.uk)