When you’re looking after your premises and seeking to ensure that only the people who are allowed to be on site have access to your buildings, system security is absolutely vital. Failure to secure your system could make your access control measures completely redundant and may be extremely dangerous to the longevity of your company. Read on to find out about a selection of major pitfalls that access control systems often have to deal with, and what you might have to do to plug the gaps and keep your business safe.
Delayed Changes To Data
One significant issue that can arise is when the data in the access control system requires some time to properly refresh. Some systems will only refresh overnight, meaning that it’s not until the next working day that access is granted or removed. Whilst this isn’t typically going to be an issue, there can be some fringe cases. For example, if an employee is fired from a company and has their contract terminated, you don’t want them to still have access to your property for at least another day. This isn’t likely to be a common problem, but it’s just one case of why immediate updates can be beneficial for your security.
RFID Weaknesses
RFID cards often present security issues. Low-cost handheld devices can be bought from sites such as eBay, which clone or replicate an RFID card’s signal. By using more up-to-date technology such as iCLASS SE, you can be safe in the knowledge that your keycard is harder to duplicate. You can also remove the need for access cards entirely by using phones for access control, which makes it virtually impossible to duplicate the signals required to gain access. While RFID cards can be a weakness, there are things you can do to prevent this.
Human Error
One of the biggest threats to any security system will always be the people using it. In the case of access control, dragging and dropping a user into the wrong group could give them access to half of the facility that they shouldn’t have access to, and if your team isn’t perfectly on the ball, several of these issues could slip through the cracks. It’s important to have a team of people working on access control, constantly checking each others’ work to ensure that you don’t get temporary workers accidentally gaining access to a manager’s office, for example. Mistakes happen, which is completely understandable, but it’s how you stop those mistakes that matter.
So, Is Your System Always Secure?
Put simply, no. No system can be completely secure all of the time. The most important thing is to understand where the gaps in your system are and how you can cover these gaps to keep your system as tight as you possibly can. It’s by understanding the flaws, not ignoring them, that you can tighten up your access control system.
For more information about access systems, contact the team at Sophia Consulting today.