I have a friend who owns a hardware store. One morning during the 1980s, he strolled into his back-room office to start his day. He was shocked to discover his safe was missing—along with a lot of cash inside.

The thing is, when he’d arrived a few moments earlier, all the doors had been locked, and their alarms hadn’t been triggered. There was no sign anyone had intruded. So what had happened? Had someone gotten copies of the keys and alarm code?

Nope.

The thieves had taken a power saw to the thin roof directly above the safe, hoisted the safe out through the hole, and disappeared into the night. My friend realized immediately that an employee, current or past, must have been involved. No one else could have possibly known about the safe’s location, or its existence at all.

This simple tale provides a good lesson by which today’s manufacturers, with all their IT and automated systems, can better secure their valuables. Here, we’ll examine the safe robbery and translate it into a security strategy.

In the successful safe theft story, what did the thieves actually do?

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