Access Control

The words access control sound impressive and somewhat mysterious. All they really mean is that access is limited to certain areas or parts of a building and to certain people at certain times. We need access control in daily life to maintain order and a sense of security. For instance, do you go to your local police station and sit at the captain’s desk? Or when you visit your bank, do you go behind the counter and open drawers and vaults? We are willing to bet that you do none of the above. Why not? You are not supposed to, for one. You are not allowed to, for another! Your access may be blocked by signs, locks, walls of glass, or a keypad. The bottom line is that you are only allowed access under certain conditions and any system put into place to enforce those conditions is a form of access control.

The benefits of access control systems

Hemet Locksmith has technicians that specialize in access control. We work all over the greater Hemet, CA region putting these systems into place for our customers. Better crowd flow, greater privacy and added security are by products of having a good system of access control put into place. You can’t have groups of people in an area and have them all have access to everything; it would be chaos! Take a sports arena for instance. You have general admission which is granted after you’ve paid or shown a badge or ticket. You have the locker rooms which obviously have limited access to the athletes, coaches and some staff. You have concessions where paid staff sells refreshments to ticket holders. You have custodial crews that clean up the grounds and building during and after the game. You also have security, management and building maintenance, all with their own badges, keys and passes to gain them entry and access to their own parts of the building.

Let’s say you have a dinner and a movie night at your house and you invite a few friends over. They don’t just drive up to your home and walk right in. They first ring your door bell and you open the door after unlocking it. Your guests know to stay in the dining room, kitchen or living area; they don’t go roaming all over your bedroom, rifling through drawers and opening closets to see what is inside. You have a system of locks, protocol, doors and alarms that allow access to certain people at certain times.

You see it everywhere!

Now that you are more aware of access control, you’ll start to notice it everywhere. You can see it at grocery stores, sporting events, restaurants, public libraries, hospitals, museums, government offices, hotels, amusement parks, music concerts, banks, nursing homes, ski lodges, public school dances and hundreds of other examples. These events and places make use of locks, doors, signs, badges, keypads, swipe cards, panic bars, deadbolts, alarms, CCTV cameras, loudspeakers, intercom, and many other items to control and limit access within and without.

Signs

We see signs everywhere we look. They are on the streets and roads when we drive. They are all over buildings at entrances, exits, offices, restrooms, pay booths, break rooms, and work areas. Signs are instrumental in allowing access to certain parts of a building and while it cannot enforce that limited access, they are instrumental in giving people the general idea of where they can and cannot be.

Locks

Locks can accomplish what signs often cannot. We use locks, keys, keypads and devices to allow access to those that hold them. In call centers for banks, credit card companies and collection agencies, the staff enter after swiping their employee badge and go to their assigned places in the building. In hotels, the desk clerk will give room access to a registered guest in the form of a swipe key or key code. Security and management use their key cards to grant them access to their designated parts of the building. Upon checkout, the guest pays the bill and relinquishes his key card that gave access to the hotel room.

Panic bars

Panic bars are those unique exit bars placed on doors that only open from the inside. These are standard on doors in shopping malls, theaters, restaurants, retail stores, hotels, grocery stores, banks, nursing homes, fast food locations, and other places where the public needs to exit. Their advantage lies in the fact that the exit door does not have to be unlocked and individually opened each time it is used. The person leaving simply pushes or leans on the panic bar, thereby unlocking the door and since it only opens one way, there is no incoming traffic to interfere with the person’s exit.

Swipe cards and badges

We touched on this briefly, above. You see swipe cards and bar coded badges in numerous places like banks, nursing homes, hotels, hospitals, high rise condos, government buildings, schools, call centers and other similar places where access to certain parts of the building are limited to those with certain qualifications. These badges are either swiped or held up to a reader and the coded information on the card is read and logged into a system. If an employee or visitor does not have granted access, it will not allow him or her to enter that portion of the building. Or, if a staff member is terminated or has access revoked, the badge reader will know that as this data has been programmed into it and access will be denied and most likely security called.

Fingerprint locks and biometrics

Other forms of access control include biometrics where thumbprints are used to allow access. These are already being used by smart phone makers with great success. Biometric locks, retina scanners, keypad devices and other forms of keyless entry are all used in various forms and applications of access control systems. If you would like to find out more about access control and its many uses, call a local, full-service commercial locksmith near you. They know best about access control as they are the ones that install and activate it