Until a few years ago, access control systems have rarely been considered an integral (and integrated) part of the corporate security system. Security was mainly entrusted to the anti-intrusion and video surveillance systems, which had the main task of deterring and detecting intrusion attempts, outside of working hours.
The automatic access control during working hours, when performed, was considered an extension of the attendance detection system and, very often, the two systems coincided. This meant that the security officer was not very involved in defining the aspects related to the authorization processes for access and, consequently, in defining the requirements that should guide the selection of the most suitable system to satisfy them.
No common strategy was put in place to take full advantage of the numerous possibilities of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the security system, brought about by the interaction of the access control system with the other applications present within the same system.
Access control systems, on the other hand, are of fundamental importance in ensuring the protection of people, assets and the know-how of companies, which are increasingly open and in which fewer and fewer employees and more and more external staff move, consisting of suppliers, consultants, outsourcers.
For these reasons, more recently, the need to have open but at the same time safer companies has led to the realization that the access control system can and must be the reference point for all the other applications present in the system, and which can be driven from it. Because the first and most important aspect of a security system in an “open” company is precisely the knowledge of the identity of all the people present inside it.
Access control must therefore facilitate the flow and operation of people, controlling the entrances in a differentiated way, simultaneously guaranteeing the safety of goods and people. To do this, it is essential that it is designed to combine security needs with those of goods and people.
To do this it is essential that it is designed to combine security needs with those of operational freedom:
– offering the easiest accessibility to environments;
– guaranteeing all automatisms to facilitate the relationship between man and work environment
– guaranteeing the company population the status of “user friendly company”
– also interacting with non-security applications such as climate, light or energy management, in order to improve the overall efficiency of the site.
The automatic access control systems must allow, interacting with the other applications, to have full control of the property, allowing to identify, identify, detect and understand what happens in order to authorize the execution of certain actions and report any anomalous or suspicious event.
Furthermore, if access control is the fulcrum around which all building applications operate, it also becomes the key to interpreting a great deal of information collected by the integrated system, which can be used for forensic purposes or for the optimization of multiple processes.
