Jargon Busting: What Do Safe Testing Standards Mean?

Pass-or-FailWhen you are buying a safes, key cabinet or gun safe you will come across a lot of jargon and the security test standards can be particularly hard to get your head around.

It can look like a collection of random numbers like EN1143-1, but what do they mean?

Here at eSafes we try and keep things as straight forward as possible so with this in mind we’ve drawn up the following guide to easily explain what each test means.

NT FIRE 017-60 PAPER
This safe can protect paper documents inside it for up to 60 minutes from fire.

NT FIRE 017-90 PAPER
Any safe with this rating will protect paper for up to 90 minutes from fire.

NT FIRE 017-120 PAPER
Any safe with this rating will protect your paper documents for up to 2 hours from fire.

NT FIRE 017-120 Dis
Will protect contents of the safe from fire damage for up to 2 hours.

BS7558/92
This is the standard that the UK Police test Gun Cabinets to. If your gun cabinet doesn’t meet this standard you need to upgrade it asap.

EN1143-1
This is a burglary attack test. Any safe with this rating has been thoroughly tested to withstand various types of attacks and forced entries. This is the standard Eurograde safes must pass.

SOLD SECURE
This is an attack test devised by the Police. The MLA (Master Locksmiths Association) carry out the tests and once a safe passes the test it can be classified as Sold Secure Police Approved.

DROP TESTED
This means a safe will withstand being heated up and falling from a large height (usually 9.1m). This is to replicate a safe falling through floors of a building during a fire.

To standardise the testing most of the above tests are carried out at independent test laboratories in Germany, Sweden, Italy, France and the USA.

If you have any questions regarding the various testing standards that are applied to safes please give us a call.