Apartment building security: concierge or security guard?

Before you discuss a concierge or a guard, walk the building with the building manager once by day and once at night, and note what someone sees if they want to get in uninvited:

• Front door: does it close by itself and lock? Does the closer work?
• Door entry: do residents buzz people in without knowing who they are?
• Garage: how long does the door stay open after each car? How many remotes are out there, and who has them?
• Storage rooms, boiler room, roof: do they lock? Who holds the keys?
• Lighting: dark spots at the entrance, on the stairs, in the garage.
• Keys and cards: is there a list? What happens when a tenant moves out?

Most of this is fixed with maintenance and rules, not staff. What remains — mainly who controls the entrance and who is there at night — is the real "concierge or security" question. For the general method, see the guide to security risk assessment.

• Concierge: reception, taking in parcels, small repairs, cleaning or overseeing it, liaising with the building manager. On site at set hours, usually daytime.
• Guard: a presence whose job is security — entrance control under the building's rules, patrols of the garage and common areas, incident logging, calling the police and residents, a shift report.

Law 2518/1997 treats as a private security company any business that provides third parties with, among other things, surveillance or guarding of movable or immovable property (art. 1 §1a). "Security staff" are those who carry out these activities or support them (art. 1 §2), and they need a work licence, category A or B (art. 3 §1). Article 1 §3 applies the same provisions to the staff of a private business who guard that business's own premises.

The law does not mention concierges or apartment buildings. If you are thinking of giving guarding duties to the building's concierge, get legal advice first. If you want guarding, the clean route is a licensed company whose guards hold work licences — see how to check the licence.

Many buildings combine the two: a concierge by day for service, guarding or a patrol at night. The question is not "one or the other" but who covers which hours.

• Visitors: the concierge or guard calls the resident and opens only once they confirm. Nobody comes in "because they said they're going to the third floor".
• Deliveries: parcels and food are left at the entrance or a set spot and the resident comes down — or the courier goes up only once the resident confirms. Anything the concierge takes in is logged.
• Contractors and removals: the building manager gives notice in advance with name, time and area; keys to storage rooms or the roof are signed out and back in.
• Someone following a resident in: if they are not known, they are politely asked where they are going.

These are the building's entry conditions, not powers of the concierge or the guard. Anyone who will not accept them does not come in, and a refusal is never met with force: the guard calls the resident or, if there is a problem, the police. See what security guards can and cannot do. The full sequence of inviting, confirming and logging visitors, with the rules for the visitor book, is in the guide to visitor access control.

• Garage door: residents wait for it to close before driving off, and the closing time is set as short as safe operation allows.
• Remotes: a list per flat; when one is lost or a tenant leaves, it is deactivated or the code is changed.
• Door from the garage to the stairwell: closes and locks like the front door.
• Storage rooms and basement corridors: lighting that actually comes on, locked doors.
• Roof: you know who has a key and why.

If a resident wants their own camera on their car in the shared garage, Directive 1/2011 (art. 15 §4) allows it only if: the building regulation provides for it or two thirds of the occupants agree; there is no building system already covering the car park; the camera is focused only on their vehicle; and they put up, at their own expense, a clearly visible information sign. The Authority adds that the resident is then the data controller.

• Systems with a response: door entry, cards, an alarm in the common areas connected to an alarm receiving centre. With no response, an alarm just rings.
• Patrol: a guard who comes by at unpredictable times, checks entrances, garage and storage, and records what they found. See static guarding vs mobile patrols.
• Permanent guard: a presence for all the hours you set. One post round the clock is 168 hours a week — with a 40-hour full-time week (Labour Code art. 189), more than four guards.

Hours between 22:00 and 06:00 carry a 25% premium (Labour Code art. 150). Price is never a reason to choose, only a reason to reject: a night-guarding offer that cannot cover lawful pay for those hours is rejected. How to weigh people against systems is covered in security guard or security system. OVIT records patrols, incidents and reports in the Guardly platform, so the building manager can see in the morning what happened overnight.

Article 15 of Directive 1/2011 deals specifically with residential and office complexes, and the Hellenic Data Protection Authority explains it for apartment buildings:

• Who decides: the body that manages the building (e.g. the general assembly), under the regulation. If the regulation does not provide for cameras, a joint decision of two thirds of the occupants is needed, on the building manager's initiative — one vote per occupied flat. The Authority's example: the general assembly votes unanimously in favour, but only 13 of 20 occupants agree — cameras cannot go in.
• What the decision says: which areas are monitored and who has access to the control unit (e.g. the building manager). The data controller is the general assembly.
• Not the flats: cameras must not control access to individual flats, and images are not transmitted to the flats.
• Control unit: not inside a flat, but in a common area with controlled access — unless the processing is done by authorised security staff, e.g. a security company acting as processor.
• Monitor: a screen left permanently on is not allowed unless security staff watch it in real time.
• Not the street: the entrance camera does not capture the street or pavement, save in exceptional cases (art. 6).

Footage is kept for 48 hours at most — a specific rule for apartment buildings, far stricter than the general 15 working days (art. 8). Set the recorder accordingly, and if something happens, tell the police and the building manager at once; how to hand footage to the police is explained in how long to keep CCTV footage.

The information sign goes up before people enter camera range (art. 12) — see what the CCTV sign must say. For the system itself, see how to choose a CCTV system. A resident's camera at their own front door follows different rules, which the Authority explains on its page on homes and apartment buildings.