Even new garage doors have inherent vulnerabilities which make them susceptible to thieves. One of these is the emergency release, which allows the door to be disconnected from the garage door opener. As you can see in this video, it doesn’t take long to break into a garage.

The good news is you can mitigate this threat and it will only cost you a few minutes and around $20.

Before I go any further let me state that the unit I installed on my garage door was given to me by the manufacturer. I was researching different security solutions and ran across them one afternoon. One of their representatives offered an evaluation unit and I accepted with no conditions.

I found the Garage Shield because I wanted to add another layer of protection to my home. After all, I recently installed a new garage door that was more physically secure than my old one. I also installed light commercial-grade locks on all of my entry doors several years ago. But the emergency release was one weak spot that could be easily and quickly exploited by a burglar, so it needed to be addressed. My goal was to find something that was simple yet effective.

Some people untie the release rope and handle from the mechanism, others use a zip tie to keep the latch closed. Both are bad ideas because the reason for the emergency release is to be able to open the garage in case of an…emergency. Underwriter Laboratories published a standard for emergency releases that manufacturers comply with in order to prevent entrapment in a garage. So it’s best to leave the emergency release installed as designed, the risks of not doing so are potentially lethal.

The good news is the Garage Shield blocks access to the emergency release while allowing the mechanism to function normally. It blocks a coat hanger from disengaging the latch and detaching it from the garage opener track. I was able to install mine in under a minute without any tools, it was so simple even a Information Technologies professional could do it! The Garage Shield now compliments my new garage door as well as my existing locks, meaning I have multiple layers of protection that make my house more secure.

You can find out more about it here but I strongly suggest you get one for your home. This is a great solution that I highly recommend for every garage door.