What is access control security?

The rule comes first

Access control fails most often because nobody wrote the rule. A community installs a gate and hands the code to every delivery driver; a building installs readers and props the dock for smokers. Before a post can enforce anything, the property decides who is a resident, who is a visitor and on whose say-so, which contractors are approved and by whom, what deliveries are allowed after hours and what happens when someone does not meet the rule. Price Protection writes that policy into the post orders on the walk-through, in the property’s words.

Officers and hardware

A card reader checks a credential; an officer checks a person. The reader cannot see that the card belongs to a former tenant, that the visitor’s account does not match the resident’s or that the truck is empty going in and full coming out. The officer cannot log four hundred entries an hour at a plant’s shift change. Most properties use both: hardware for the volume and the record, an officer at the points where judgment matters, and the officer’s log as the account that ties the two together.

What an access post records

Every admission: time, name, company, who authorized it, the unit or area visited, and time out where the post sees departures. Every refusal, with the reason. Every exception to the after-hours rule. The log is part of the daily report and it is what a manager reads when a package goes missing, a unit is entered or a vendor disputes an invoice.

Where it applies

Gated communities, lobbies, docks, construction gates, plants and yards, hospitals’ after-hours entrances, schools’ single doors, data centers and any building with a staff-only area. The access control security page describes the posts, and the access control logs article explains what a good log contains.