Reintroducing Ourselves And Employees To Face-To-Face Work
Post pandemic, many organizations that are required to have on-site personnel are adopting a hybrid workforce while reintroducing staff to office buildings, facilities, and campuses nationwide to full in-person work again. However, with such a large number of employees returning at once, this exposes vulnerabilities and employee security issues that some workplaces are unprepared to address. There is a ‘new normal’ and we have to ask ourselves how we can bring employees back into the workplace while protecting our people, places, and data?
The need to monitor and track employees and visitors has become necessary for essential businesses operating in physical locations. Organizations like Google are taking several important actions in anticipation of returning to an in-person work environment, and Inc. interviewed the Google CEO about what business should include in their return to office plan. Every department from HR to IT and security plays a hand in their organization’s safety and functionality. Here’s our advice to develop your return plan and safely manage employees and visitors in physical locations.
Obstacles Large Employers are Facing
The pandemic has accelerated security risks and vulnerabilities that we have seen first-hand for many years. Lack of photo ID cards, paper-based visitor management systems, and for most companies, bringing the entire workforce back at once would be impossible. Even if aspects of these solutions have been addressed in the past, earlier technology may not provide sufficient protection as the environment has rapidly transformed.
If your business is relying on outdated credentialing technology such as 125Khz low-frequency ID cards, you could quickly become a target for unauthorized individuals who may want to gain access for malicious reasons. It’s essential to close the gap with updated physical access control systems by using smart card technology with secure encrypted credentials. Newer enterprise security solutions can also be used for secure computer logon, simplifying the job of providing uniform credentials for remote and in-person workers throughout an organization.
Some members of your team may have originally been hired as remote workers, so they’re unfamiliar with your facilities and team when working face-to-face. Using ID badges becomes an immediate tell-tale sign of who’s a staff member and what their security level is. This prevents any outside person from trying to breach security by using customizable ID card software to create ID cards that are extremely difficult to replicate or clone.
The Answer is Smarter ID Cards
ID cards should be issued to employees and visitors as standard, and the employee security badge policy should be updated with photographic ID cards and visible lanyards.
For employees returning to hybrid or full in-person work, replacing ID cards quickly and accurately minimizes the risks prompted by outdated credentials, incorrect ID photos, or the loss of ID cards altogether. It’s easier than ever before to clone low-frequency legacy prox cards, if your legacy technology is supported by easily cloneable credentials your physical measures and procedures are not going to be secure or industry compliant.
The HID Global HDP6600 ID badge printer supports high-volume secure ID card issuance. The multiple field-upgradable encoder options are available for one-step, inline printing, and encoding.
Equally as important is implementing an ID card personalization software such as ASURE ID Exchange software. Your team can design and manage ID printing, and utilize a single internal database with a configurable Live Link plug-in. You can quickly and easily manage card memory, load multiple smart card applications, and graphically personalize smart cards such as HID iClass prox cards in one seamless process.
What is the Next Step?
For the hybrid workforce as well as the full in-person employees returning to office buildings, facilities, and campuses, updating your employee security badge policy and upgrading your physical access control systems are fundamental.
If your organization is still adapting to hybrid work and unsure of its implications for maintaining security, ADVANTIDGE is your expert resource. We can evaluate your existing measures to determine how you can provide robust security measures for employees whether they’re on-site or remote to prevent problems before they occur. To find out more about how ADVANTIDGE can provide enterprise solutions designed for hybrid workplaces, contact us here.
