Changing the locks is an unavoidable part of running a business, no matter the size of your building, and becomes more of a problem for multi-site organizations. Which means that having effective key control can save you and your business time and money, without compromising on security. Creating secure and streamlined key control for your business depends on your security needs, size, and industry, but there are key control best practices that businesses of every size and industry can adopt to increase security and cut down on key management costs. One of those is utilizing a rekeyable interchangeable core system.
To learn more about key control best practices, check out our Key Control Program.
Let’s start with the basics: an interchangeable core, or an IC core, is a figure eight shaped cylinder that can be removed from lock hardware and replaced with another core in order to change your locks. Interchangeable key cores were invented in the early 1900’s to avoid the hassle of needing to call a professional locksmith for every rekey. Instead, interchangeable cores could be removed by authorized personnel within a business with a control key.
InstaKey furthered key core innovation with user-rekeyable interchangeable cores. While traditional interchangeable key cores eliminated the hassle of needing to call a professional locksmith for every rekey, they aren’t a perfect solution to inevitable lost keys and the expense of subsequent core swaps.
InstaKey’s user-rekeyable interchangeable cores allow authorized personnel to rekey locks after a key is lost or in the event of a physical security breach without needing to remove the core from the lock. All it takes is a Step Change Key, a 180-degree turn in each affected lock, and the corresponding set of replacement keys for that step, to distribute to affected key holders. With rekeyable cores, locks can be changed in seconds without needing to be replaced.
Overall, a rekeyable interchangeable core system can eliminate more of the time, hassle, and cost of rekeying than traditional interchangeable cores. Rekeyable cores can cut costs, improve security, and be integrated with your existing key system. Let’s take a look at how rekeyable cores can benefit your business.
Implementing rekeyable cores in your locks can save you both time and money. While replacing the interchangeable core for a single door is an easy task, rekeying becomes considerably more difficult and expensive when more locks are affected. Hypothetically, if you’re a business with 500 locks in your building or across sites and a master key is lost, you’re looking at almost $20,000 in rekeying expenses to secure your key system. For many businesses, that cost is unexpected and prohibitive, especially during times of economic uncertainty.
While converting to a new lock and key system can be a financial undertaking, the long-term cost benefits are considerable, particularly when you have more access points to manage and secure. With user-rekeyable cores, the expense of a rekey for 500 locks is significantly reduced to only the cost of a Rekeying Kit, the next set of keys and a Step Change Key, which amounts to about $50 based on 5 master keys, on average.
In the inevitable event of a lost key, your quick response when rekeying affected locks is crucial for maintaining security. With traditional interchangeable cores, you need to have spare cores on hand (which can take up a lot of storage space depending on the number of doors and locks in a key system) or have to order cores as needed. Ordering as needed often comes with long shipping times that can leave gaps in your security and impact loss prevention.
Rekeyable interchangeable cores make the rekeying process easy. Since rekeyable cores do not need to be removed and replaced within the locking hardware, there’s no need to store additional cores or wait for them to be shipped. Instead, you can easily change the locks in an affected door immediately after being notified of a lost key or keyed security breach. After distributing your keys for that step change to affected key holders, you can order the next step’s Rekeying Kit to have on-hand for the next time a rekey is necessary, without having your security compromised by long shipping times.
Master keys are an important component in ensuring that key holders with high-level access can get into all relevant locks in and across sites, but master keys are a security risk if lost or stolen. InstaKey’s user-rekeyable cores eliminate some of the stress around master key holders, as rekeying locks at the master key, sub-master key, or grand master key level is easy.
In the event of a lost key with a rekeyable interchangeable core system, locks can be changed instantly and independent of access level, meaning that locks can be changed at only the master key level without requiring new locks or other operating level keys to be changed. While this practice may seem difficult in theory, enacting a change with InstaKey’s rekeyable locks is easy, as demonstrated in this master rekey demonstration video.
As mentioned above, utilizing rekeyable cores in your building can save you storage space or budget dollars on locksmith callouts and they can streamline the process of ordering new cores and keys. A user-rekeyable lock from InstaKey can be rekeyed up to nine times. With rekeyable cores, all you need to worry about is storing the keys for the next step change instead of having both cores and keys for every door in your building. After a rekey, you can order the Rekeying Kit for the subsequent lock change and rely on InstaKey’s speedy shipping to have them within days.
Implementing user-rekeyable cores throughout your business is a big commitment, but it’s one that can save you considerable time and money down the road. Rekeyable cores offer you the most control over your locks and keys out of any cores on the market. Combined with other key control best practices like restricted keys and key tracking software, you can have peace of mind knowing that your business is secure. If you’re ready to add InstaKey user-rekeyable cores to your business’s key security, get in touch!