Written By: Brad Campbell | February 14, 2024
Glass doors are an essential design feature in many commercial buildings. They welcome in natural light, improve visibility, and create a clean, modern aesthetic that aligns with today’s branding and architectural trends. However, traditional glass entryway doors are also one of the weakest points in a building’s security perimeter.
Standard commercial glass doors, usually made from tempered safety glass, do almost nothing to stop a determined intruder. With the right tool or enough force, someone can breach the glass within seconds, providing immediate access to valuable assets, sensitive data, or occupied spaces. For many property owners and facility managers, this risk is unacceptable.
This guide breaks down the vulnerabilities of standard glass entryway doors, explains how to improve door security for glass doors, and highlights why upgrading to a high-security glass door system is one of the most effective ways to strengthen a commercial building’s defenses.
The fact that so many commercial buildings rely on glass doors as primary entryways might lead you to think they are secure. But the reality is that even the strongest tempered glass offers little resistance to intentional breakage, leaving commercial properties vulnerable to forced entry and other threats.
Tempered glass does break into much safer, more rounded fragments compared to the sharp, jagged shards of broken annealed glass, but it still breaks easily, and that’s the core issue. A well-placed swing from a hammer or pry bar, or an impact from a well-aimed brick or piece of concrete, can break a tempered glass door on the first strike.
For this reason, more businesses and facilities are turning to high-security glass doors: doors reinforced with specialized framing and glazing that can withstand break-ins, vandalism, and even worst-case-scenario ballistic threats.
Creating a secure building envelope starts with reinforcing the doors most likely to be targeted. In most cases, these are ground-floor entryway doors, facing a street or parking lot that allows easy walk-up access.
The strongest solution for securing vulnerable entryways is to convert the existing glass door system to a high-security entryway door unit designed specifically for forced-entry resistance.
A true high-security glass door system uses:
Rather than shattering or becoming deformed under impact, these high-performance security glazing and framing systems absorb and disperse impact energy, remaining intact even after dozens of blows. This dramatically increases the time and effort required to gain entry often enough to stop intruders entirely or allow security response teams time to intervene.
In fact, with the right combination of materials, it’s even possible to create a virtually unbreakable glass entryway door system.
If replacing the entire entryway door system is not feasible or desirable, security glazing retrofit solutions can transform a standard glass door into a high-security glass door without full renovation.
Glass door security glazing retrofits involve overglazing (mounting in front of) or backglazing (mounting behind) existing door glass with specialized glazing shields, using retrofittable framing adapters. The retrofit security framing holds the new glazing securely in place over the existing glass, preventing forced entry and, in the case of overglazing, preventing it from breaking easily upon impact.
Depending on the level of security you need, you can retrofit either containment-grade (non-ballistic) or bullet-resistant (ballistic-grade) security glazing to protect against everything from smash-and-grab theft and burglary attempts to riots and active threats.
Even the strongest glazing will not perform well if the surrounding hardware and framing are weak. To improve a door’s structural integrity, building owners often install high-security:
Combining reinforced frames and hardware with forced-entry-resistant glazing gives you a complete security solution rather than a single isolated fix.
Even a reinforced, high-security glass door should be paired with smart entry management. This can include:
These systems help ensure that the security door is both strong and intelligent, allowing only authorized individuals to enter while physically keeping threats out.
For maximum security, glass door upgrades should be implemented along with additional layers of protection, such as:
Break-ins often happen quickly, quietly, and during off-hours. Hardening glass doors with security glazing and framing provides continuous protection, giving businesses peace of mind in knowing that the most vulnerable entry point is no longer exposed.
A high-performance glass door security glazing system can protect against:
This level of always-there glass protection is especially important for high-risk businesses and facilities, from luxury retail stores to government buildings and schools.
Riot Glass specializes in turning weak glass entryways into virtually unbreakable, high-security glass door systems. Our solutions are designed for commercial buildings of all types and threat levels.
For metal-framed glass entry doors, Riot Glass offers industry-leading security glass door conversion kits. These systems upgrade the entire door assembly with:
AP75 is engineered to withstand attacks from 9mm handguns while also resisting prolonged forced-entry attempts from blunt objects and heavy hand tools.
Certain Riot Glass glazing, including AP75, is certified under ASTM F3038, a rigorous test simulating real-world attack scenarios involving multiple would-be intruders striking the glass repeatedly with common, easily accessible objects.
Passing this test means the system is suitable for high-security government, commercial, and institutional facilities that need to be able to withstand mob-style forced entry attempts.
If your commercial building relies on glass doors for entryways, reinforcing these vulnerable points is one of the most important steps you can take toward improving the overall safety and security of your property and the people within.
A high-security glass door system dramatically reduces risk and protects your building around the clock, providing peace of mind during both normal operations and unexpected events like civil unrest or storms.
Contact Riot Glass today for a free consultation on strengthening your commercial glass doors and windows with our virtually unbreakable security glazing solutions.
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