Security Starts at the Door
Posted on Wed, Dec 08, 2010
When you arrive at your office building each morning to report for work, you enter through a door. Someone, whether it is the CEO, security guard or another employee, has to unlock that door. This simple step has much more of an impact than you think.
When you the question: “Is this building secure?” you think of a locked door or the physical aspect of securing a building. But as a security integrator, ASG understands that there is so much more to the door than simple hardware.
We recently heard from one of the ASG Security Summit & Expo’s Gold Sponsors ASSA ABLOY with their informative blog on how important it is to “own” the door: “Ownership Means Owning the Opening.” This is a critical step for customers to reap the benefits of a subject matter expert (SME) by reviewing all the requirements surrounding the opening and receiving, in turn, a complete system tailored to the specific needs of that particular organization, building or company. With the wealth of innovative approaches and products coming into the market each year, the critical path to finding the right one for your facility is something to take seriously.
ASG understands that there are multiple facets of securing a building and the opening is just the start, but it is critical when forming a system that works for your company, its environment and culture. Something that has changed over the last decade is the intelligence possibilities emerging around the opening. With physical security devices converging on to the network, the organization now has numerous approaches to consider, creating possibilities for process improvement, security analytics and increased security.
Take a recent article from Cygnus Security Group's Opening the Door on Enterprise Security. Here we see an example of why physical security and the IT organization must work together to keep the building and its contents, including the people, secure.
“Managing digital identities and user access is more important than ever. Security should be the joint responsibility of both building security and IT. Traditional integration solutions have historically been intrusive, difficult to deploy and costly. New open platforms and software-based systems fit nicely into the IT structure for both IP based access control and video surveillance.”
Another article that grabbed our attention on the importance of the door is from Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor of CSO Online Magazine. Her article Seven Deadly Sins of Building Security explains how often building security mistakes in and around the door cause breeches leading to unsecure facilities.
How important it is to secure your opening? In Tom Olzak’s article Open door? Game over., he provides an eye-opening view of why it is so important to understand your door and how both visitors and staff enter through it. Tom shares a story of what happens when physical access to your systems is breached by simply walking in the front door.
Ultimately, your goal should be to create a unified system that protects not only the opening or door to your facility, but provide the best results based on the environment and culture of the organization using the technology. Integration is the glue that creates an intelligent security platform.
How secure, intelligent and measurable is your door?