In a perfect world, a college or university campus should be a safe space. It’s a place for hungry and curious minds to learn and live peacefully. The reality, however, is when you have large groups of people moving about in a large number of buildings, each with hundreds of rooms, this creates thousands of potential vulnerability points — access points for criminals to steal or otherwise do harm. How do you properly manage university campus keys in a way that minimizes risk and helps keep people, and their belongings, safe?
Restrict Key Access
When you think of every door as an access point, you realize that your campus keys are either your best tool for security or your greatest point of risk. How you manage those keys determines which is which. Keys, whether mechanical or electronic, should always be secured and issued to staff only as needed. Installing a key control system can help this process. This way, only authorized staff can access lock boxes by use of their IDs (or even fingerprints), and keys can be checked out as needed and returned when the staff is finished. For electronic key systems, you can take this a step further by programming the system to allow staff access only to their authorized areas on campus.
Track Your Keys
Every key that gets misplaced becomes a security liability, and with thousands of keys roaming around campus, they are remarkably easy to misplace. Key control systems not only can restrict access to authorized staff — they also create a documented audit trail so can track which keys are checked out to whom, and for how long. The system can also alert you of unusual patterns or behaviors. You’ll know immediately if a key goes missing, and you’ll know who had the key last.
Implement Robust Security Measures for Your Keys
On large campuses, even with strong vetting and background checks in place, sometimes bad guys slip through the cracks. While restricting keys to authorized campus staff, how do you protect against violations from within the ranks? Answer: You create additional security features in your key tracking system, create multi-step security protocols for people accessing keys, keep keys barcoded and placed in randomized positions within the box, and pull reports frequently so you can quickly detect suspicious activity.
If you’re serious about properly managing your campus keys, HandyTrac can provide a secure key control system perfect for your organization’s needs. To learn more, contact us today!
Community security should be a top priority for any property manager. Multifamily, student and military housing communities have hundreds, sometimes thousands of residents to protect at a time, and criminals could target any community with perceived weaknesses. This is why an important aspect of a property’s security plan should be protecting unit keys.
In any large property, whether it be a factory, military base, school or multifamily community, the danger of lost keys is an ongoing concern. Unfortunately, key loss happens all the time, usually due to poor organization, human error or both. Every time it happens, your building becomes more vulnerable. When high security is required, locks must be changed whenever a key turns up missing — a costly prospect. Electronic card keys can mitigate this risk because they can be programmed to expire, but few management companies have the money to transition all doors and locks to card keys. So how can you prevent key loss, or at least make the risk more manageable? Here are four tips to help out:
Overseeing a multifamily community or building complex naturally requires some form of key inventory and control. Your current process may have served you well for a time, but when is it time for an update? How can you tell if your key control system is outdated? Here are some key indicators that you may need an upgrade.
The vast majority of the time, keys get into the hands of bad guys for one of three reasons:
If you’re working to improve safety and security in your building or multifamily property, be careful not to overlook the most vulnerable point of potential breaches: the door. Any building security package that doesn’t include some sort of key control system is leaving at least one gaping hole in their net.
Look for Multiple Layers of Secured Access
Here are 6 facts about the reality of key loss and why you should take preventive measures to avoid the risk and cost associated with losing keys.