Whether you're at a factory or a multi-family building, security is security. Your goal is to protect people and property, keep threats out and minimize risk.

The idea behind a security and access control system is safety, regardless of the site.

However, it goes without saying that different kinds of sites are going to have different needs. For example, a military base is going to require a little more security than a suburban office building.

Several industries have niche needs as well, including the education market.

Schools face unique challenges when it comes to security. Administrators must consider both internal and external threats, keeping children and staff safe while also ensuring that the school remains a positive learning environment.

Supply theft, sprawling campuses, unauthorized visitors, threats of violence...all of these are things schools need to consider when looking for the right security system.

Fortunately, a good school access control system is able to take all of the above into consideration.

Finding the right system is all about doing your homework

We've spent a lot of time in this blog talking about why Visitor Management is important for sites of all kinds.

While the specifics may vary depending on the industry, the basis of every Visitor Management system is the desire to keep a site and its personnel safe from harm.

This desire applies to all kinds of worksites, from hospitals to factories and everything in between.

However, it's not a stretch to say that Visitor Management is a little more important for overall safety and security in a few industries. Healthcare is one of those industries.

We recently discussed calls for increased safety at healthcare facilities and how a good Visitor Management system goes a long way toward achieving that goal of increased safety.

You may be wondering, "what makes healthcare so different? Isn't building safety basically the same everywhere?"

While it's true that there are common threads between site safety at all kinds of workplaces, there are unique aspects of healthcare facilities that make the need for hospital Visitor Management a little more pressing.

The unique safety challenges hospitals face

It's a sad reality: those who work to protect the most vulnerable among us are in turn among the most susceptible to violent outbursts and attacks while on the job.

As we discussed in a previous blog post, studies have shown that healthcare workers have a rate of workplace violence that is 20% higher than workers in other industries.

This means that doctors, nurses, surgeons and other technicians are far more likely to be harmed on the job than office workers, retail employees and others in the general employment population.

These people work tirelessly to help their patients get healthy, saving lives on a regular basis. For decades, violent outbursts at hospitals and other healthcare facilities have been unfairly swept under the rug and viewed as "part of the job."

However, those attitudes are beginning to change, and the change is starting with the workers themselves.

Employees are saying "no more" to workplace violence

Badge Buddies role-recognition cards have become as common a sight in hospitals and medical centers as stethoscopes, scrubs and white coats.

These ubiquitous ID accessories are popular for a number of reasons. They're affordable, they meet some state ID requirements and they're easy to customize.

When doctors, nurses, technicians and other hospital employees go about their busy days, Badge Buddies go along for the ride.

However, Badge Buddies were often left exposed due to their larger size, as they don't fit in standard-sized ID badge holders.

This left Badge Buddies (and the ID cards attached to them) exposed to all aspects of hospital life, including the potentially dirty hands of patients, dust, water and sanitizer, which can be harmful to printed imagery.

Being exposed to abuse like this drastically reduces the life of both the Badge Buddy and the employee ID badge, increasing both cost and frustration.

However, there's now a quick and simple way to increase the life of both credentials.

A new way to hold your Badge Buddies

Lititz, PA (July 7, 2017) — When a fast-growing digital marketing company needed to secure its new, state-of-the-art headquarters in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, it didn’t need to look far to find the perfect access control solution.

After all, Lititz and Manheim are just a few miles apart. 

Listrak, based in Lititz, and IDenticard Access Control, based in Manheim, recently partnered to bring a secure, innovative access control solution to Listrak’s brand new headquarters. 

Founded in 1999, Listrak grew quickly and has been named to Inc. magazine’s list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America in each of the last two years.

This rapid growth led to the company having multiple offices spread throughout Lancaster County, with a headquarters in Lititz and additional offices in Lancaster.

There's no shortage of things to like about WhosOnLocation^™, the innovative, cloud-based product in our offering of Visitor Management solutions.

• It's easy to use.
• It requires no downloads or installation.
• It's packed with features.
• It's affordable.

Those reasons alone are compelling enough to pique the curiosity of anyone interested in a Visitor Management system, but there's another reason to add to the list: WhosOnLocation is constantly being updated with new features.

The team at WhosOnLocation isn't content to rest on its laurels; instead, new features crop up on what seems like a weekly basis.

The team continues to add a variety of different capabilities to the system, from tweaking existing features to introducing entirely new modules, meaning WhosOnLocation is only getting more robust by the day.

Reminders, alarms and more...

Nowadays, cybersecurity and data theft are two of the hottest topics in the world of technology.

The rise in the importance of and interest in cybersecurity has been driven by a number of high-profile incidents that have occurred over the past several years:

• There have document and data dumps perpetrated by individuals like Edward Snowden and Reality Winner that have revealed sensitive government information.
• There has been ongoing discussion about the involvement of Russia in "hacking" the United States Presidential Election.
• There have been massive global malware attacks, like Petya and WannaCry, dedicated to stealing personal or customer data and holding it for ransom.

To put it simply, data security is a big deal in today's technology-focused world, and it's only going to get bigger.

Organizations around the world, terrified by the prospect of becoming the next company that has its customer data stolen and by having to deal with the ensuing PR fallout, have responded to these threats by ratcheting up their data protections.

These attempts have included things like two-factor authentication, biometric authentication and varying levels of encryption. 

While they're effective at addressing certain types of threats, these methods don't address a central vulnerability: your servers and data centers themselves.

Don't ignore the physical when you focus on the digital

If you ask ten people to give you the first image that comes to mind when hearing the word "security system," chances are you'll hear "surveillance camera" or some variation of that term pretty frequently.

And it makes sense: to most people, a surveillance camera is the very symbol of security, whether it's looking over busy city streets from atop a utility pole or stuck up in the corner of a local convenience store.

Surveillance cameras are a powerful security feature for a pretty simple reason: they provide irrefutable record of whatever is going on at a site. 

With today's technology, audio can be somewhat misleading and still images can be doctored. However, "let's go to the tape" is still worth its security weight in gold.

For this reason, many organizations shopping for an access control or door security system have surveillance cameras on the brain when comparing and contrasting various systems.

Because access control systems and surveillance cameras are, on their own, pretty complex pieces of hardware and software, it's no surprise that the level of compatibility between the two varies so wildly.

Some access control systems integrate flawlessly with surveillance video equipment, while others have trouble or just barely scratch the surface of the camera's capabilities.

However, before you go looking for a system that can handle high-powered surveillance cameras, there's a basic question: should you bother?

"Let's go to the tape" or take things off-camera?

It could be argued that basic key/pin-and-tumbler door locks are one of the most ubiquitous inventions in human history. 

That may sound like pure hyperbole, especially when one considers things like electricity, indoor plumbing and the Internet.

But think about it: how many times on a daily basis do you encounter a basic, cylindrical pin-and-tumbler lock?

The answer, of course, is dozens. There's probably one on the front door of your house, one on the back door, one on the locker at your gym, one on the front door of your favorite coffee shop to lock up at the end of the day...the list goes on and on.

The standard pin-and-tumbler lock is reliable, trustworthy and familiar. It's been used in some format for more than six thousand years. (That's a lot of keys...)

However, technology marches on, and the key/pin-and-tumbler lock isn't immune to the relentless advance of modern progress.

Like the iPod^® rendered the DiscMan^® obsolete, or like Amazon is bringing about the death of big box stores, electronic locks are slowly but surely replacing key/pin-and-tumbler locks at facilities of all kinds.

An innovative security solution for modern times

One of the main goals of any hospital is to keep the people inside, whether they're staff, patients or visitors, safe from harm.

While this goal isn't limited to hospitals (factories, schools, office buildings and other sites all want to keep their personnel safe too), safety and security are taken particularly seriously at healthcare facilities. 

It may be because of the vulnerability of the people receiving treatment inside, or due to the desire to ensure that people wracked by anxiety over a loved one's condition don't have anything else to worry about.

Regardless of the specific impetus, hospital administrators and security staff spend countless hours reviewing Visitor Management procedures, fine-tuning security plans, monitoring video and training for particular incidents.

It's obvious, but a security director or hospital administrator would be able to sleep a lot more soundly if he or she knew the facility was doing everything it could to keep potential threats from ever accessing the building.

This, of course, seems obvious: if you keep nefarious characters outside, you drastically decrease the likelihood of those characters harming anyone at your facility.

The problem is that it's difficult to identify troublemakers before they come inside, right?

Wrong.

Watch lists serve as a first line of defense