Locks versus Access Control

This topic came up with a friend and he suggested his workplace did not need locks since it had access control. WHAT??

Allow me to get back to the basics. If you have a building and all the staff go home, something has to keep a snoop or a criminal from opening a door and just walking in to take stuff. That task is called physical security and the door has to be held by some type of lock hardware. How good your physical security needs be depends on what is on the other side of that door. How good your physical security IS depends on the wall, the door, the hardware and the lock itself.

At some point the next morning, the first staff member returns and needs a way to open the door from the outside. If you are running conventional locks, this is a key. If you have access control, this could be a proximity card. (There are even system where you could send an special email from a phone to a server controlling the door and open the lock too.)

In all these cases, your key or the card or a PIN number are called credentials. If you have to show an issued ID card to a guard before getting into a building, that too is a credential. If you have the right credential, you can enter. Most places actually have both keys and cards. You need to plan for the possibility there will be some problem develop in the card reading system and leave you locked out. The most obvious is power failure for an extended period but vandals smashing the reader would do the same.

Access control is a good name as it really suggests its function. It does not do any better job of keeping out random people in the small hours of the morning, but does let many staff in and keeps a record of that. And more importantly, you can turn off the card for any one person without affecting all the others.

I guess in summary, access control replaces keys with cards and changes what has control of the locking hardware. At much higher cost, it gives an audit trail of all the people who moved through all the controlled doors. However, any good system has keys on a few doors too but with limited key distribution.


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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/