Life Safety & Security January 2021

Solving key and access
control challenges
in the education sector
software, and data reside at the provider’s data centre. It’s a centralised
way to manage all access, have 24/7 support, and receive the benefits
of a large solution provider. Those benefits include:
Low startup costs
Scalability
Instant updates
Minimal downtime
Higher security
Mobile first access management
Integrated multi-facility management
Immediate addition, removal, or modification of access privileges
Frequent data backup
Continuous product improvement and development
5) Hygiene and Physical Separation
Organisations will hopefully start to bring staff back to the office in
2021, after months of working at home. To lure them back, companies
will have to ensure safety and hygiene policies, procedures, practices,
and protocols. This could mean adoption of touchless systems,
removal of doors, sanitization stations, one-way traffic, reduced
occupancy, social distancing, and so on. Other innovations might
include modifying hours of operation of systems, tightening access
privileges, limiting building access points.
As long as coronavirus remains a concern, organisations can audit
access data to assist in contact tracing for individuals who test positive
for COVID-19.
Bonus Trend: Wearables and Implantables
Ubiquitous as they are, smart phones may disappear as quickly as they
arrived. Smartphone capabilities are moving to wristwatches, earbuds,
belts, and even smart clothing. The appeal of wearables for access
control is clear: you don’t have to retrieve a card, punch in a code, pull
out your phone, or lay your fingerprints on a platen. You simply move
your watch in the path of the reader to open a door.
On the horizon is technology that is implanted in, tattooed on, or injected
into the human body. Elon Musk and various other startups are
experimenting with various options. Such a technology, once a person’s
key is uploaded to the cloud, could become that person’s universal
access control.
Filtering access into and through any education institution is a
formidable task. Diverse user groups have contrasting needs:
senior management teams vs. cleaners, or IT staff vs. students.
Indoor and outdoor spaces may require totally different levels of
security. Visitors should experience a controlled, curated flow
through the site. Staff need timely access to teaching rooms.
Student access to the library or IT suite must be monitored. All
this must be achieved while maintaining exactly the right degree
of openness.
Budgeting is an ever-present challenge. Although a familiar
technology, physical keys require security management which
can be time-consuming and labour-intensive. Physical key
admin puts added pressure on busy staff when someone loses a
key, for example. Locks need changing; keys recut and reissued
— and this costs money. With an electronic access system
instead of traditional lock-and-key security, a few clicks in the
management software cancels and reissues all relevant
credentials, with almost no extra cost added. It saves facility
managers’ valuable time and the organisation’s money.
Wireless locking is fast and cost-effective to install, because it
requires no invasive drilling. It’s also cheaper to run as, unliked
wired locks, wireless door devices are powered by batteries and
use very little energy. Education institutions all over the world
have already found success by switching from mechanical to
wireless electronic access control, in both cost and time
savings, and by addressing challenges specific to their sector
and situation.
Schools: time-saving access control without a specialist
security team
Small establishments such as local schools do not have the
budget or need for an in-house security expert. Yet their security
challenges match any faced by large institutions. An access
control technology suited to schools must be intuitive to operate
— both hardware and software.
Maintenance presents another problem: in-house staff are
unlikely to have the expertise, yet contracting a specialist is
expensive. At Vejle Friskole in Denmark, managing security
based on physical keys had been eating up “a very long time –
approximately five hours a week,” explains Henrik Kækel, the
school’s Technical Service Officer.
Vejle Friskole’s mechanical keys have since been replaced by an
access control system; around 80 doors and cabinets are
secured with SMARTair wireless locks. Approximately 250
students and teachers carry their own fob, programmed with
individual access permissions. Locking devices fit many
different types of opening, so everyone at the Friskole opens
doors and cabinets with a single fob. There’s no need for
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