12.16.2025
Every commercial building needs emergency exits — not just for compliance, but also for the safety of employees, customers, and other building occupants. However, while these doors are vital for emergency egress, they’re also one of the most commonly exploited weak points in commercial security.
Commercial emergency exit doors are often out of sight and out of mind, installed at the back or side of buildings where visibility is low and surveillance may be limited. That makes them a favorite target for criminals, who take advantage of poor lighting, low foot traffic, and weak door construction to gain unauthorized entry.
No matter how secure your main entrances and windows are, if your emergency exit door is not properly reinforced, it can be rammed, drilled, pried, or cut open, giving intruders easy access to your property.
Why Are Commercial Emergency Exit Doors Necessary?
Emergency exit doors aren’t just a best practice — they’re also a legal requirement. Under building and fire codes, any commercial property that houses employees, customers, or tenants must include exits that allow quick and safe evacuation during emergencies like fires, earthquakes, or other hazardous incidents.
These doors must be readily openable from the inside without a key, typically using a panic bar or similar emergency egress mechanism, and they must remain unobstructed at all times. The goal is to ensure that anyone inside can leave immediately, even in a chaotic situation.
You’ll find commercial emergency exit doors in:
- Retail stores and shopping centers
- Office buildings and business complexes
- Warehouses and distribution centers
- Restaurants and hospitality venues
- Healthcare facilities and schools
- Manufacturing plants and industrial properties
These exits are essential for compliance and safety, but they can also become a security liability when not properly designed or reinforced.
The Vulnerabilities of Commercial Emergency Exit Doors
Even though emergency exit doors remain locked from the outside, they’re vulnerable to criminals who know what they’re doing. Many standard exit doors, including hollow metal doors, were never designed to resist forced entry techniques used by professional burglars.
Criminals often target these doors because they’re:
- Located in low-visibility areas behind or beside buildings
- Poorly monitored by employees or surveillance systems
- Constructed from thin-gauge metal or aluminum, easy to deform or cut
- Equipped with basic locks or latches that can be pried or drilled open
Even more heavy-duty metal exit doors can be compromised with enough determination and the right tools. Common forced-entry methods include:
Prying
Using crowbars or pry bars, intruders wedge open gaps between the door and frame, bending the metal and disengaging the latch.
Drilling
Attackers use power drills or hole saws to compromise lock mechanisms or create openings that allow manual manipulation of the latch.
Cutting
Gas-powered and electric saws can slice through standard steel or hollow metal doors within minutes, creating large enough openings to gain full access.
Ramming and Impact
Burglars may use sledgehammers, battering rams, or even vehicles to break through doors that lack reinforced cores or frames.
In short, while a commercial emergency exit door may meet fire safety codes, it may fail to meet modern security standards, leaving your business exposed to intrusion, theft, and property damage.
What Can You Do To Reinforce Commercial Emergency Exit Doors?
Fortunately, there are several ways to strengthen your existing emergency exits and prevent them from becoming a weak link in your security system. The key is to balance safety with security, maintaining code compliance while ensuring forced-entry resistance.
Here are the most effective ways to reinforce your commercial emergency exit doors:
1. Reinforce Door Frames and Edges
The frame and edges are the most common points of failure during a forced entry attempt. Reinforcing them with high-strength strike plates, steel edge guards, or continuous hinges adds rigidity and helps prevent prying or separation under pressure.
2. Secure Hinges and Hardware
Weak or exposed hinges can be easily removed or tampered with from the outside. Use tamper-resistant or through-bolted hinges, and consider installing hinge bolts to prevent the door from being lifted out of its frame.
3. Upgrade Locks and Access Control
Emergency exit doors must always open freely from the inside, but that doesn’t mean they should be poorly protected on the outside. Consider keyless entry and electronic access control systems that restrict exterior access while preserving interior egress. Reinforced latch guards and heavy-duty panic hardware can further enhance resistance to tampering.
4. Add Visibility and Lighting
Poor lighting and lack of visibility around exit doors make them more inviting to intruders. Installing motion-activated LED lighting and surveillance cameras can deter criminal activity and improve response times if a break-in occurs.
5. Retrofit With High-Security Exit Doors
While reinforcements can help secure existing emergency exits, the most effective solution is to replace doors with purpose-built, high-security exit doors designed specifically for forced-entry resistance.
Modern high-security doors, such as QMi’s HD1 steel security exit door, combine multiple layers of protection, including:
- Anti-cut technology that dulls or disables saw blades on contact
- Anti-drill plates that resist drilling and hole-saw attacks
- Interlocking astragals and continuous hinges that prevent prying
- Reinforced cores that withstand ramming and sledgehammer impacts
These doors can typically be retrofitted into existing frames and can be customized to blend seamlessly with a range of exteriors, providing a turnkey security upgrade that doesn’t compromise safety or building aesthetics.
When paired with other commercial-grade solutions, like roll-down security shutters and security glazing systems that protect storefront doors and windows, high-security exit doors help create a fully protected building envelope, securing every potential point of entry.
Balancing Safety and Security
One of the challenges property managers and business owners face is maintaining both safety compliance and robust perimeter security. Over-securing an emergency exit can lead to code violations or endanger occupants in a real emergency, while under-securing it leaves the building open to intrusion.
The ideal solution is a code-compliant commercial emergency exit door system that allows free egress from the inside while offering extreme resistance to exterior attack.
Conclusion
Your emergency exits are more than safety features. They’re also critical security barriers. A single weak exit door can undermine even the most advanced commercial security systems, allowing criminals to bypass cameras, alarms, and secure storefronts with ease.
Upgrading emergency exits with high-security doors engineered for forced-entry prevention closes this critical gap in your building’s defenses, protecting your property, assets, and people without sacrificing safety compliance.
Contact QMi Security Innovations today to learn how we can help you secure your commercial emergency exit doors with solutions that strike the perfect balance between safety and security.
