Certain industries require that their products and services are safe, reliable, and confidential. This means that any tampering with products, equipment, tools, parts and any other items can lead to the endangerment of property, environment, and life. Plainly put, when you want to protect your products and goods, you can use security seals, placed and broken by authorized personnel only.
There are various types of seals depending on what you need them for. For example, if you want to know whether someone tampered with the package, you can use a springlok. Security bags that are great for storing medicines, documents, or any other sensitive items. Of course, there are bar seals that are commonly used for containers and offer a high-security barrier against accidental openings or break-ins. To get more insight into which industries use security seals, here is a list of the most common ones that employ this type of safety and protection.
Food industry
Food manufacturers have a lot of responsibility to their consumers to provide safe, healthy, and fresh products. While the food on itself has an expiration date, it can shorten if the package was not properly sealed or opened during storage and delivery. Another issue is that food can easily get contaminated which can spoil it, or cause health problems for consumers.
For example, if a consumer noticed that the seal is broken or damaged, they will have suspicions that something may be wrong with the product. This will lead to closer examination and removing the problematic food from the supply chain before it causes serious problems.
Moreover, cargo theft is one of the most pressing challenges of the food industry, amounting to more than 30 billion dollars of costs annually. While securing the shipments is not the only way to minimize or prevent this, using security seals on food packages can make the thieves rethink their intentions.
Pharmaceutical industry
Stealing medicines and medical devices is a considerable reason to use the best and strongest security measures. When the pharmaceutical supply chain is interrupted, the medicinal products don't reach people that need them and it can cause a shortage, and consequently ruin someone's health. Moreover, stolen products can be used to counterfeit products and place bad and harmful medicines among the population.
For these reasons, the pharmaceutical industry takes great care to secure its shipments by implementing supply chain security risk assessments and measures. One of those is using the most theft-proof way of packing each batch using security seals, especially those with electronic trackers and adjustable strap-type seals. Since most of the thefts happen in transit, securing shipments should be a priority to prevent tampering, destruction, damage, and stealing of pharmaceutical products.
Medical industry
While the medical industry also deals with medicines and medical devices like the pharmaceutical one, it also has other sensitive items that need security seals. For example, medical records with information on patients' treatments, conditions, and other private data. This includes samples taken from patients and sent for analysis, especially if they are potentially contagious and sensitive. Also, the results of said tests are sent in sealed bags to protect the identity of the patients and their diagnosis.
Some medicines need to have security seals while in the medical facility because they are addictive, toxic, or fatal if taken in large doses. Some of the commonly used seals in the medical industry are pull-up seals, padlock seals, and fixed-length security seals.
Transport industry
When it comes to transporting goods, the first thing everyone cares about is the safety of the shipment. Some things require utmost confidentiality, for example, sensitive documents, and some the best security, for instance, money. Finding reliable measures, like Harcor security seals, can greatly affect not only the shipment but also your reputation and business.
The solutions vary from simple ones that will alarm you that someone has opened the shipment and possibly tampered with or stolen something. Alternatively, some options will require elaborate tools to open and may deter thieves from trying.
Financial service industry
The financial service industry uses security seals during money transport, for ATMs, documents in transit, private banking, and in-house storage. The most used seal types are bag seals that have a multi-locking system or pull-tight seal.
When it comes to ATMs, using a seal is not a choice but a regulation. Portable cartridges with cash always have to be sealed after filling, usually with a wire seal. Sensitive documents that hold information that can damage the bank or its clients if stolen use security seals, as well. Plastic padlock seal for the pouch and light pull-up plastic seal are the most frequently used to transfer cashier's checks, bonds, legal documents, and other types of forms.
Chemical industry
For various reasons, storing, transporting, and handling chemicals requires special conditions, one of them being the use of security seals. A lot of chemicals used in the production of products, like cleaning agents, medicines, and fertilizers, are toxic and extremely dangerous. Some are flammable and unstable so making sure they are safely stored can save lives and properties, allowing access to only authorized individuals.
A container or barrel with chemicals can use an anti-tamper seal, hazard class labels, and container VOID label seal. A reusable electronic security seal may be a good idea when you need to access the chemicals repeatedly to make sure that access is granted only to people who are trained and skilled to handle them.
In conclusion
When it comes to which industries use security seals, the shorter answer would be about “which doesn’t”. Some industries rely on these security measures more than others, like pharmaceutical and financial services. That doesn't mean that others are not equally sensitive to tampering and theft, as it's the case with the food industry.
Nonetheless, a wide range of available security seals allows every industry to use them and protect their consumers, goods, services, and profit. After all, a business depends on its reputation to build a successful and trustworthy brand.
