Home & Home Office Safes

No other facility in a home provides long-term peace of mind quite like a properly certified and installed home safe.

From the most basic of small home safe requirements to protecting fine art objects, high-end jewellery and gold bullion, Certified Safes Ireland™ employ the same expertise and attention to detail to ensure your home safe provides long-term peace of mind. Certified Safes Ireland™ are uniquely qualified to survey your home, find a location that allows for the correct installation of your home safe to European standards, and to integrate your safe seamlessly into your household.

Home surveys are free of charge

Home surveys are free of charge, without obligation and entirely confidential. We have years of experience installing home safes both large and small into houses built in Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian eras, common in Ireland. We are regularly referred by architects, insurers and wealth managers who appreciate the knowledge of structure and diligence required when fitting a home safe into an older and sometimes protected structure.

The importance of legally accredited European certification

EU Parliament regulation 765/2008 created the system that provides the legal basis of accreditation for the burglary resistance certification of safes. The ultimate protection against misrepresentation and a legal proof of standard of burglary resistance, accredited European certification is the most important factor in maintaining insurance cover long term, as well as being the basis for all insurance rate recommendations in Europe. 

If you consider that 70% of safes tested for burglary resistance by accredited European testing labs fail on the first attempt the practical implications of accepting unaccredited claims of burglary resistance are obvious.

The relationship between legally accredited European burglary resistance certification and insurance cover

With the exception of the UK, insurance rate recommendations throughout Europe are sourced from the insurance industry itself and provide a guide for both insurers and consumers in selecting a safe suitable for a given level of risk. In Ireland, the only source of insurance limit recommendations in relation to cash and jewellery cover for certified safes, sourced directly from the insurance industry, are Irish Safes Rating Group rates. Although you may encounter alternative and often highly inflated rates advertised by some safe sellers, especially when it comes to jewellery cover, such speculative marketing rates have no basis in reality and are a good indication of the overall reliability of a supplier. Official insurance rate recommendations in all European countries only apply to safes with accredited European certification of burglary resistance to European standard EN1143-1 as a legal proof of standard.

Accredited European certification marks

Recommended rates of insurance cover rise in line with certified burglary resistance grade of a safe, which can range from 0 to VI, as ascertained by an accredited European testing laboratory and subsequently certified by a completely independent accredited certification body, however, the final rate of cover is subject to the overall risk assessment of the insurer, while basic requirements are a monitored intruder alarm is installed on the premises where the safe is located and the safe is anchored correctly.

Irish Safes Ratings Group recommended rates

What legally accredited burglary resistance certification looks like

A safe with properly accredited European certification of burglary resistance will display at least one stamped metal certification plate on the inside of the door. This will always be a stamped metal plate, never a sticker and will display the word "SAFE" and the standard EN1143-1 alongside the logo of an accredited European certification body (not the manufacturer). In the case of ECB-S and VdS certification plates, ISO/IEC 17065 accreditation will be annotated. The same information is also available on an accredited certification document which should always be asked for.

What legally accredited fire resistance certification looks like

A unit with accredited European certification of fire resistance will display a stamped metal plate with the words "Light Fire Storage Unit" and the standard EN15659 for paper documents, or the words "Data Cabinet" and the standard EN1047-1. Whereas the EN15659 standard is only revelevant to paper documents, under the EN1047-1 standard a unit may be certified for paper documents or data, and this will be clearly marked. This plate will often appear alongside a separate certification of burglary resistance. In the case of ECB-S VdS certification plates, ISO/IEC 17065 accreditation will be annotated.

Certification documents

An accredited European certification document certifying the burglary or fire resistance of a safe or cabinet should always be asked for when purchasing either product. This document should match the product details displayed on the products metal certification plate and most importantly, confirm that the body issuing the certificate of compliance is accredited to ISO/IEC 17065, your legal assurance that the certifier is properly accredited under European law, providing a legal proof of standard. Of course, when it comes to product certification plates and certificates of conformity there will always be suppliers who will try and pass off a variety of plates, documents, approvals and guarantees as the genuine article, so it is important to always look for the logo of an accredited European certification body and the ISO/IEC 17065 accreditation for long term peace of mind.

Unaccredited marks that should not be confused with legally accredited European certification

Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB) (UK)

The Loss Prevention Certification Board (LPCB) (UK) is a mark commonly encountered in the Irish market yet the body has never been an accredited certification body for the burglary resistance of safes, not even in the UK, according to UKAS.

Sold Secure (UK)

Owned by the UK's Master Locksmiths Association, Sold Secure says on its website that it is "the premier testing and certification house" yet similar to LPCB has never being accredited to either test or certify safes in the UK or Europe.

NT FIRE 017 Fire Resistance

The most common unaccredited fire resistance mark in the Irish market is undoubtedly NT FIRE 017 a nordic conformity assessment founded in 1973. This mark has no relationship to certified fire resistance under accredited European standards in either testing or application.

Association of Insurance Surveyors Ltd (UK)

Both the Association of Insurance Surveyors Ltd "AiS Safe Rating List" and "AiS Approved" sticker might sound like products of the insurance industry but are actually marketing vehicles for completely untested safes as well as pre-2000 second-hand safes which should be presumed to contain asbestos.

Secure by Design (UK)

A UK Police initiative, the Secure by Design “Police Preferred” scheme provides highly questionable endorsement for safes and secure cabinets that have no record of accredited burglary resistance testing and certification whatsoever. When displayed on a safe the mark has no bearing on suitability for any purpose.

 A safe must be anchored in compliance with the EN1143-1 standard

EN1143-1 certification is void for a safe that has not been anchored but some safe installers' idea of what constitutes “anchoring” can differ wildly from others. The benchmark for the correct anchoring of a certified safe is a replication of the laboratory test anchoring force. This means an anchor designed to achieve a holding force of 50kN (5.089 tons) for a safe up to grade III and 100kN (11.24 tons) over that grade, holding forces that rule out removing a safe under most circumstances. 

All certified safes come with a bolt suitable for achieving these anchoring forces, so it is really down to the installer of the safe being familiar with the correct anchoring method. As with certification, always ask for a certificate of anchorage with the anchoring force the installation was designed to achieve indicated on the document. If an installer can not tell you how such anchoring forces are to be achieved this should be a red flag.   

 Monitoring a safe via local alarm

An increasing number of people now choose to link their home safe directly with an intruder alarm system with the use of seismic sensors and to a lesser extent duress being the most popular options. Even if you do not intend to do this straight away, or your insurance company has not requested this integration, it is always a good idea to make sure the home safe and locking device you choose is prepared for intruder alarm, seismic sensor, and duress to future proof your investment. Many rudimentary safes on the market have no such preparation. With the exception of some of our smallest safes, most of our home and business safes come with certified alarm cable tracks and seismic sensor mounting preparation as standard. An alarm cable track can also be quite useful for running watch winder and interior lighting cables.

Digital v mechanical locks

It has always been possible to open a mechanically locked safe by manipulation leaving no trace of entry. Both the knowledge and tools to defeat most mechanical safes locks are now very easily obtained and of course keys for safes are also easily copied, even from a photograph. In comparison, the penalty lockout feature of a certified digital safe lock shuts a safe lock down for ten minutes if four incorrect codes are entered in a row. With the ability to interface with duress and alarm modules, unavailable for a mechanical lock, mechanical access control for a safe has been phased out in most of Europe. The Irish Safes Ratings Group (ISRG) and An Garda Síochána recommend certified digital safe locking over mechanical for security reasons.



Always insist on a digital lock certified to European standard EN1300. If alarm integration is to be used in conjunction with the safe lock, all alarm integration components need to be certified to the European alarm standard EN50131 as alarm signalling devices, in order to elicit a police response.

Protecting your confidentiality

As Government and NATO contractors Certified Safes Ireland™ understand the need for confidentiality and will always respect yours. We guarantee the confidentiality of all of our private clients. Any photos taken for survey purposes have location data removed and are erased directly after use unless directed otherwise by the client. All booking records and client information pertaining to completed work is anonymised across all of our systems at the end of each month in compliance with the G.D.P.R

 For free, confidential expert advice call: +353 1 7076011

Certified Safes Ireland™ in-house advisor on keeping jewellery, watch collections, goods, cash, documents and data, safe, secure, yet readily accessible, is Alan Donohoe Redd.

Alan Donohoe Redd is a member of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) Working Group responsible for writing European Standards for safes, strongrooms (vaults), secure cabinets and physical data protection for the European Union and a member of the U.S. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Standards Technical Panel TC72 covering standards for fire resistance of record protection devices. Alan is also a registered NATO supplier and a longstanding member of the European Security Systems Association. Alan has a vast range of experience spanning almost 40 years encompassing installation of safes, strongrooms, physical data protection, CCTV, alarms, access control, secure storage control systems and Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) specification, design and installation. 

An expert on standards and fraud issues related to secure storage in Europe, the UK and the use of asbestos in European safe and cabinet manufacturing, Alan has had articles related to these subjects published by The Law Society Gazette and Irish Broker Magazine, has forced retractions of multiple false claims related to secure storage offerings to the public and has been pivotal in having misleading standards and practices recognised and withdrawn in Ireland, the UK and at a European level.

Alan's seminars on safes, strongrooms and high net worth secure storage have been part of Continuing Professional Development for underwriters and insurers having been awarded CPD points by the Insurance Institute of Ireland and the Chartered Insurance Institute (UK).

 Alan's expertise has been relied on by:

N.A.T.O. Europe, The U.S. Air Force (Europe), The National Treasury Management Agency (Ireland), The Department Of Communications (NCSC Cyber Security) (Ireland), The Revenue Commissioners, Electricity Supply Board (Cyber Security) (Ireland), The Danish Defence Forces (Afghanistan), PayPal (Worldwide), Grant Thornton, The Insurance Institute of Ireland, The Royal College Of Surgeons, BFC Bank, Interxion Data Centres, The Private Security Authority, Isle of Man Gold Bullion, Brown Thomas, Bvlgari, Boodles, Druids Glen, The Shelbourne Hotel, and many others ....