One of the key benefits of combining physical and logical access control becomes evident in simplified infrastructure management and better access to resources.
One of the key benefits of combining physical and logical access control becomes evident in simplified infrastructure management and better access to resources. Rob Martens, Futurist at Allegion pointed out that by combining the two forms of access control, facility executives can recognize significant productivity savings while at the same time providing higher level of convenience and potentially more personalized experience to end users.
“Things such as no tour capabilities allow facility executives to manage their assets with fewer staff, and better real time visibility,” Martens said.
Indeed, simplification appears to be the keyword here. To Mike Sussman, Technical Director at TDSi, this means by integrating a single source of data the management of both systems is simplified with the manual data entry reduced.
“This also has the added effect of increasing security by ensuring any access at both levels is updated at the same time,” Sussman said. “The linking also means that a single source for access is defined and managed, whether that be access to servers and files or buildings and rooms. This can now be managed from a single point of entry, thereby reducing the risk of the two systems being out of sync.”
Daniel McVeagh, Senior Product Manager at Gallagher stressed on the point of simplification as he explained that by creating a single point of truth for employee identities on a site, an organization can reduce duplication of entering new employee data, and of the ongoing management of their access rights.
“Standardizing on a single access token across both logical and physical access systems can reduce the cost of credential issuance and the ongoing management of lost and replacement credentials,” McVeagh added.
Then there is also the role of security administrators as the solutions come into effect. “With mobile solutions becoming available for both facility and information security, we’ve begun to see the roles of security administrators evolve to a more holistic perspective across the entire organization,” Julian Lovelock, VP of Strategic Innovation at HID Global said. “Facility and information security teams are already working together more closely, and will increasingly collaborate even more tightly on all aspects of designing, implementing and maintaining robust security capabilities.”
“A single sign on is a good example,” said Takahashi. “What IT and infrastructure department want is to manage fewer logins, fewer passwords, fewer systems and if they have a single login, then they can determine your activity, it’s easier to manage and maintain. So we get a lot of requests for single sign on, for role based access, depending upon one’s role, in the system from the IT department, one’s logical access could also help determine based on role based access, what different things I am capable of doing based on my role within my system.”
Robert Lydic, Global VP of Sales at Isonas said that in the combination of physical access and logical access, most people they are dealing with are utilizing groups of users, in terms of logical access.
“Logical access is tied commonly to Microsoft Active Directory,” Lydic said. “That active directory allows people to have that logical access based out of which user group they are part of and by putting that into the physical access control, truly allows them to gain greater visibility and to know who is in which spaces, how long are they in those spaces, what time are they arriving in the respective spaces. So it really is a significant ease of management of the respective resources.”