Let’s look at the stories of two building managers. Both oversee large commercial buildings of about the same size with roughly 200 employees. High security is a must for both businesses. Exterior doors are kept locked at all times. Interior doors protecting areas of vital operations are also locked.
There are a lot of doors for each company to protect. It’s easy to see how quickly it could get complicated linking employees to keys and the doors they can enter.
This is why a key management system is critical. Building manager Rick thought he had a system. He and his team maintain spreadsheets with the names of each employee, along with the number of keys that person carries and the doors he or she can open. But on busy days (almost all), Rick’s team may get sidetracked and forget to enter data for a new employee. If you forget even one person the system begins to fall apart.
Rick is careful to make sure all company keys are stamped “Do Not Duplicate.” But key blanks for his building are stocked by local locksmiths, DIY stores and other locations. Getting a duplicate may be difficult, but hardly impossible. Also, there’s little to discourage employees from lending keys, especially as there’s nothing to distinguish one key from another.
The key management system Rick devised held together until one three-day holiday weekend when someone used keys to open doors and remove important company documents. Rick’s boss demanded a list of employees with access to the affected doors. As Rick looked at his spreadsheet, he realized his system was full of holes.
He couldn’t provide a list with any certainty. For all he knew, the thief might have been a disgruntled former employee fired weeks earlier. His staff hadn’t recorded whether the former employee turned in his keys as he left. With Rick’s records in such a mess, the company had no choice but to rekey every lock and issue new keys to all employees.
Judy has much more confidence in her key management system. She has 24/7 access to a secure web-based program linking people, doors and keys in simple drop-down menus. Unlike Rick, she doesn’t worry about her staff remembering to enter data. She lets her key vendor maintain the records.
Each of her company’s keys have individual serial numbers making it a snap to link them to an employee. Key blanks are only available from the vendor or an authorized dealer virtually ruling out the possibility of someone having a duplicate made.
If a key is lost – as happens occasionally – Judy has to rekey only those locks opened by that key. Her key management system makes it simple to match keys and doors. And the lock cylinders provided by her vendor make rekeying so easy, her staff can do the job without the added cost of a locksmith.
Your company may not conduct high-tech research or employ 200 people. But your business deserves to be secure. Whether your business has four employees or 4,000, two or 200 doors, you need to protect your people and assets. Knowing what key each employee carries and what doors those keys open is an important first step. And for that, you need an accurate key management system.
That’s part of InstaKey Security System’s total solution. You can maintain your own key lists, or we’ll do it for you. We work with companies of every size and we can design a system specifically for you. Learn more about streamlining key management on our website. Do you want to see how it works? Contact us and we’ll show you.
