Garage Door Security: 9 Weak Points Burglars Look For

The nine weak points

Walk your own garage against this list.

• An emergency release cord reachable through the top gap with a coat hanger — shorten it and remove the plastic handle.
• An unlocked interior door from the garage into the house.
• An old fixed-code remote or keypad; anything pre-1996 can be captured and replayed.
• A remote clipped to the visor of a car parked in the driveway.
• Uncovered garage windows that show whether a car is home.
• An exterior keypad mounted where a code can be watched from the street.
• A door with no interior slide lock for vacations.
• A worn bottom seal leaving enough gap to insert a pry tool.
• No exterior lighting or camera covering the driveway approach.

Fixes that take under an hour

Shorten the release cord so it clears the top of the door by a good margin. Install a deadbolt on the interior garage-to-house door and use it. Frost or cover garage windows. Move remotes to a keychain or use a keypad instead. Set a motion light over the driveway.

Worthwhile hardware upgrades

A few equipment changes close the rest of the gaps.

• A rolling-code opener, which generates a new code on every press.
• A smart opener with open alerts and a scheduled auto-close.
• A wall console lock button used when you travel.
• An interior slide lock for extended absences.
• A camera aimed at the door rather than the street.

If your opener predates 1996, replacing it is a security upgrade as much as a convenience one.

The most common cause of all: the door left open

More garages are entered through a door someone simply forgot than through any clever technique. A smart opener that texts you at 11 p.m. and closes on a timer eliminates that category entirely, and it is the single highest-value security upgrade we install.