Straightforward Thinking Around School Safety
As the landscape rapidly changes within our education system, ADVANTIDGE has been working closely alongside schools and school districts to streamline solutions as education costs skyrocket, and departments on all levels look for ways to do more with less. Add the looming threats to campus security, and educators must make decisions that balance the quality of education with protecting the safety of their students and staff.
In the United States alone, there is a high percentage of crimes committed in Elementary, Middle, and High Schools each year. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows that these crimes harm students, distract teachers, and cost school districts millions of dollars. Encouragingly though, crimes on school properties are decreasing, thanks to a national effort and the increased security measures taken by school districts such as implementing a physical access control system.
In many ways, schools have been slow to adopt technologies commonly used in the private business sector. These enterprise security solutions focus on identification, access control, visitor management, and multi-factor authentication. Student admission is still a manual, time-consuming process at most primary education school campuses, which often fail to provide sufficient identification information surrounding campus visitors.
School campus safety can be upgraded with combinations that include an upgraded student and employee security badge policy, physical access control systems, and a complimenting visitor management system. Different solutions can be customized for schools with open campuses to ensure persons onsite are identified and accounted for, while closed campuses can maximize security with building access control systems to allow entry to persons with approved credentials.
Threat And Risk Prevention
Multi-functional Smart ID Badges
The same technology that corporations use for access control systems, secure smart card IDs, can be used to improve school campus security as well. There are schools sporting an aging legacy system and still utilizing low-frequency 125 kHz RFID cards, which have become increasingly vulnerable to unauthorized duplication.
Because of this, our team at ADVANTIDGE encourages all of our clients to adopt a higher level of security with safer high frequency 13.56Mhz Encrypted RFID credential technology like the HID iCLASS prox cards. This adaptable smart card solution employs an advanced encryption technology, embedded with smart features and tamper-resistant overlaminates; making duplication virtually impossible through mainstream cloning devices. Education campuses can realize a wide range of benefits, from tightening security to streamlining admissions and improving paid services with these types of ID card technologies.
RFID-enabled smart cards present the optimal solution not only for visitor management but for access control for all people campus-wide. Issuing a smart ID card to all faculty, students, staff and visitors allow security departments to control who has access to which keyless entry, where, and when.
Campuses can improve dormitory safety, secure labs with high-value equipment, and ensure research departments performing specialized projects only provide access to those with authorized credentials. A religious non-profit in Los Angeles secured its own housing and departments. The non-profit was looking to implement an ID solution to issue their staff & students during the return to in-person education settings, and reopen its 24-hour student housing. They wanted to secure all external entry points to ensure residents’ safety, limit unauthorized access for health reasons, and find a system integration solution that wouldn’t disrupt ongoing student activities.
They turned to ADVANTIDGE to upgrade the physical access control system and ID badge issuance capabilities at their new facility with the focus on securing the main entry points on the ground floor of their student dorm center and customizing individual access with a cloud-based platform for easy updates in the future.
Visitor Management and Physical Access Control Systems
Basic visitor management software enables visitor registration and recording, issuing visitor badges, check-in/out, and more. And advanced software provides ID scanning, record creation, watch list screening, and email notification to name a few. Using a visitor management system such as HID Global EasyLobby can be the game-changer in protecting physical and digital resources from security threats like piggybacking, allowing organizations to identify exactly who is on campus and when.
Updating the HID visitor management process at your facility to include an automated ID card scanning solution, will ensure that along with a visitor’s name, date and time of entry, you also have their address, driver’s license number, and basic physical description in your system. When you incorporate a driver’s license scanner into your school security system software you will be able to automatically add applicable visitor identity information to your system.
Beyond the exponential security increase, pre-registration, background checks, specified access approval, onboarding, minimal in-person handling, and overseeing large groups could all be done entirely web-based and will reduce the burden on administrators.
Security is more than ensuring visitors casually check in at an office. Protecting the safety of students and staff is increasingly important. By prioritizing the visible presence of security at a school, IT/Security and Management can work together with their community of parents and staff to show the effort of implementing reasonable measures.
Besides hiring enough security guards to police every facility and access point, what can education departments do to improve security today? School security departments must know who is on campus at all times. The first step is to limit entrances and exits, then apply visitor check-in and issue the visitor a temporary RFID-enabled ID smart card with track-and-trace technology capabilities. Upon sign-in, school visitor software can also determine if a visitor is wanted by law enforcement or is registered on external watchlist databases.
The team at ADVANTIDGE has assisted education institutions in creating secure, cost-effective identity management solutions with 40 years of combined industry experience. We offer enterprise security solutions surrounding ID badge issuance, HID visitor management systems, multi-factor authentication, and all physical access control system upgrades required for maximum student and employee security. To find out more about how ADVANTIDGE can provide a robust and complete security solution designed for the needs of your organization, contact us here.
