Access control: Definition and What It Means for Your Property

The rule comes first, the gate second

Access control fails most often because nobody wrote the rule. A gated community installs a beautiful arm and a keypad and then hands the code to every pizza driver in Fort Bend County. A warehouse installs card readers and props the dock door open for the smokers. An officer at the gate cannot enforce a policy that does not exist, so the first thing we do on an access post is get the policy in writing: who is a resident, who is a visitor, which contractors are approved and by whom, what deliveries are allowed after hours, and what happens when someone does not meet the rule.

Officers and hardware do different jobs

A reader checks a credential. An officer checks a person. The reader cannot tell that the card belongs to someone who moved out, that the visitor’s story does not match the resident’s, that the contractor’s truck is empty on the way in and full on the way out. The officer cannot log four hundred entries an hour on a shift change at a plant. Most properties use both: hardware for volume and records, an officer at the points where judgment is needed, and the officer’s daily activity report as the record that ties the two together.

What an access control post records

Every admission the officer makes is logged: time, name, company, who authorized it, the unit or area visited, and time out where the post sees departures. Refusals are logged with the reason. The log is part of the daily report every Price Protection client receives, and it is what a manager reads when a package goes missing, a unit is entered or a vendor disputes an invoice. The access control security page describes the posts we staff and how a new one is set up.