The steps you need to take to effectively manage access control
At EA Group we’re specialists in making businesses and commercial properties more secure places. Whether you’re protecting the entrance to your site, or securing an area within it, you need technology and processes that give you peace of mind.
Our access control systems are ideal for protecting your business and meeting your unique requirements, whatever they are. We’ve worked alongside organisations from the private to public sector, matching our expertise to their needs. Our notable access control clients have included police forces, airports, hotels, sports clubs, local government, schools and colleges.
Every business is different, but we believe that there are a few guidelines any team can follow to better manage their access control systems.
The goal of access control
When implementing an access control solution, you first need to set out what you hope it will achieve. For most businesses, it’s a balance between keeping their site secure and remaining accessible for visitors, staff and customers.
Most organisations want access control to be discretionary. In other words, you can assign a set of rules to a programme that allows some users to enter, but not others. Your security services will then carry out these rules. Some sites may need more advanced permission-based systems that only allow entry based on the user’s role within your business. An example of this would be X-ray rooms in a hospital.
Once you know why you need an access control system, there are additional factors to consider.
Operational requirements
You need to understand how your access control system will affect the way people move around your site. If it isn’t properly set up, could it cause congestion or disruption during an emergency? Your system should increase the ease of movement around your site, not hinder it.
Some businesses that manage their own access control only have very simple requirements from it. Whether it’s an intercom or a keypad, sometimes that’s all you need. However, businesses have seen a lot of benefit from integrating access control alongside other services like CCTV, attendance tracking systems, or their communications. For this to happen you need an expert opinion.
Integrations
Your access control should be one part of a more developed security process. It’s great to have a system that can grant and deny access to areas to your site, but it needs to be bolstered with a more robust security presence.
CCTV is the obvious way to do this. We can integrate your CCTV seamlessly alongside access control, allowing you to see how and when occupants interact with it.
For many industries, we also know that attendance tracking is crucial. Our access control services can create a log of who used each service when. This is ideal for businesses that need to clock when staff arrive and leave. We’ve also seen it used effectively by schools to track attendance, or businesses in the leisure sector to track how often clients visit their gyms.
Finally, our access control services work brilliantly alongside our range of physical entry systems. These include speed gates and automatic doors, which integrate with access control systems to physically grant access once a user has been verified.
Key management
One of the main benefits that access control systems provide is the ability to leave keys in the past. It provides your team with more options to enter your site securely, even if they leave their keys at home. Whether they buzz an intercom and can be let in by a member of staff working remotely, or even by using biometrics to gain entry, there’s a lot of options.
We know this isn’t an option for every business though. If you use an access control service that requires the use of key fobs or cards, you still need a key management process in place. We recommend keeping a record of all keys issued. Then you can ensure they’re always returned when a member of staff leaves, and create a contingency plan if your access control process is compromised.
If you use keypads for your access control, you should also make sure that codes are reset on a regular basis, when staff members leave, or after any kind of security breach.
Why EA Group
For your business or your home, we’re happy to work with you on your access control. Our team can help to ensure your solution meets the needs of your business, filling any gaps in your security infrastructure. Whether you need an intercom or a full security solution, we’re here to help you and your team.
For more information about our systems mentioned here or if you have any questions that we haven’t managed to answer here, get in touch at +44 (0) 1372 459536. Check out our other blogs for more tips about how your business can make the most of these services.
