It’s old, it’s outdated, it’s archaic – call it what you will. When the moment arrives when your card reader refuses to let you, your staff, or someone else who is authorized into your organization, it’s time for a change. How that change is done and how much it will cost is the hard part. But there’s good news: a switch might be on a smaller scale, like the Falls Church City Public School System in Virginia.
Let’s be honest. The average employee probably doesn’t give his or her ID badge much thought. They hope that they remember it each workday, it gets them in the building and it’s fun to swing around when they’re bored. But new badging systems are changing how IDs are being used throughout an organization, adapting the piece of plastic from a utilitarian accessory to an integrated business tool.
Using metrics provides a quantifiable way to measure the effectiveness of security programs and processes. As the popularity of metrics has increased over the past few years so has the number and type of metrics that are used to evaluate efficiencies. However, without proper vetting, metrics may not effectively evaluate the process or program that is being measured.
Smart cards, like other steps along technology’s ever-evolving pathway, biometrics and megapixel cameras to name two others, share ingrained challenges. New stuff is often more expensive than existing stuff. Bring something new in and, often, you have to upgrade other gear that is part of the total system to make it all work together. Then there are design, installation, maintenance and training costs as something new comes through the door.
Cruise ship industry institutes new security and safety rules, including more physical access controls, after accident in which captain is still under house arrest.
More than 80 public housing developments around New York City will be getting $41 million worth of high-tech cameras, intercoms and locks controlled by electronic key tags.
It’s a wonder that Mark Domnauer gets any rest. As Corporate Security Director for Adobe Systems Incorporated, Domnauer has risk coming at him in all shapes and sizes, and from any direction. Whether it’s a smartphone or tablet app, a game, video, digital magazine, website or online experience, chances are that it was touched by Adobe technology.
In my last column I wrote about the “Human Factor” of access control and identification. I now recall several negative incidents that I experienced as a security director involving security staffs screening persons entering the lobbies of hospitals.
In the digital age, increasing amounts of data are being shared in new and often unanticipated ways. With the proliferation of data, devices and connections comes a set of new security threats. Midsize companies, in particular, are feeling the heat.
