No Printer Required

Over the years, we have  been fortunate enough to work with customers across the country and we have developed thousands of customized badging systems to help meet each organization's specific requests and needs.  Typically, a customer requires badging software, a card printer, badges and supplies.  Once in awhile, we also sell Driver's License Scanners for automated enrollment into the system - for those customers who don't want to manually enroll information and find scanning an ID faster and easier.  But that's it!  Easy enough, right? 

However, more and more often, we've run into customers looking for a badging option that does not require a printer.  Whether they are looking to save some money in the budget or just free up some extra time, having a printer onsite is not a viable option for them.  They would prefer to send their data offsite and have their cards delivered. 

This customer input is how we developed Web Print, a smarter credentialing option for customers who are not interested in the cost of an on site printer and supplies.  This cloud-based print service guarantees printing and delivery of badges faster than any other solution on the market.  Customers expect shipment wihin 48 hours of submitting print.  

Best of all, Patent-Pending Web Print allows for complete access control integration for customers interested in doing more with their badges than simply wearing them!    

The future of badging has arrived. 

Lindsay Martin-Nez is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc.  BadgePass manufactures cutting edge software solutions including Photo ID, Access Control, Visitor Management, Time Manager and Driver's License Scanning.  For more information, visit www.badgepass.com. 

School Security Assessment

Over the last several months, the number of K-12 campus security walk-throughs that I’ve completed with dealer sales reps and end user customers has increased dramatically.  This can be attributed to a wide variety of factors, but the simple reality is that most people have a heighted awareness of security right now.  They are looking to implement systems that will allow for easy identification and tracking of persons throughout the district.  This can include Photo ID, Visitor Management, Access Control Software and even mustering applications. 

If you are a school district considering any or all of these solutions, here are some basic questions to ask yourself as you get started with choosing a system that is right for you: 

• Do faculty and personnel in the school have and use Identification (ID) badges?   Is this policy enforced?
• What is the current procedure for obtaining a new ID badge?
• If you are considering electronic door access, how would you like employee and faculty badges to be activated in the access control system?  Will each school have a printer or will badges be issued centrally at the district office? 
• Are all exterior doors locked as part of a closed campus policy?
• Are public entrances monitored and controlled through locking, supervision or electronic access (ie: buzzing someone in?)
• What is your current visitor policy at each school?  Are they asked to show ID when checking in?  Is this policy enforced? 
• Do you have an electronic process for registering and badging visitors? 
• Do you have any third party groups that use the building for activities?  If so, how do they gain access?  How would you like them to gain access in the future, if you implement a new system?
• How often are exterior doors propped open in the building? 
• What is your current lockdown procedure?  Do you practice this regularly? 
• Describe your current key control procedure.  Do many people have master keys or only a select few?  Are all master keys accounted for? 
• How does student traffic flow between classes?  Do you have multiple buildings on campus to consider? 
• Do you have a system in place for evacuation and mustering? 

Thinking about these questions in advance will help you realize your district's primary security needs and recognize the areas you should address first.  Understanding your strengths and weaknesses up front will also help you as you research security systems for badging, visitor tracking and access control. 


Lindsay Martin-Nez is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc.  BadgePass manufactures cutting-edge Photo ID, Visitor Management, Access Control and Time Management software.  To learn more visit www.badgepass.com. 

Three Point Plan for Increased School Security

Across the nation, school districts are focusing on the safety and security of their campuses and addressing any concerns. They understand the importance of ensuring the safety of their students and faculty, yet, sometimes the implementation process can seem a bit overwhelming. That is why we have developed our “Three Point Plan” for a safer school district. 

Step 1: Visually Identify People

By implementing a visual identification policy district wide, schools can foster an environment that encourages faculty and staff to question unknown people on their campus. Many schools that we work with are requiring the visual display of identification for all faculty, staff, students and even visitors. This makes it easier to recognize unauthorized visitors in the building. To ensure consistency, make sure faculty and staff can get their photo IDs issued quickly and visitors can check in efficiently. By avoiding complicated software and a long turnaround time for badge issuance, you will greatly improve the success of whatever system you choose.

 

Step 2: Control Entry Points

To aid in identification and security efforts, schools should manage the flow of visitor and faculty traffic through pre-defined entry points. More schools are implementing electronic card access systems to monitor door status and enable easy lockdown campus-wide, if necessary. To better manage traffic flow, schools should design the system to notify them when doors are propped open and make sure that the system is programed to deactivate credentials automatically when a person(s) leaves the district and no longer needs access rights or privileges.  This will help prevent unauthorized users from having access to your campus.

Step 3: Know What Happened

 
Anytime an event occurs in a school district, the school should be able to access real-time information within seconds. Campuses nationwide rely on video surveillance and quality reporting for accurate recall of various occurrences. In order to receive the most accurate and reliable data possible, schools should ensure their system offers fast and easy access to video footage or reporting information and avoid inaccurate data and unknown camera outages.

 Lindsay Cornell is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc. BadgePass manufactures cutting edge Door Access, Photo ID, and Visitor Tracking software. Visit www.badgepass.com for more information.

Credential Overflow

Thousands of organizations struggle with a common door access security issue known as Credential Overflow. 

Credential Overflow occurs when the number of active credentials in the system outnumber, sometimes drastically, the number of active cardholders.  If a company's door access system is not equipped to handle the causes of this issue, they may face some serious security risks as a result. 

What causes Credential Overflow?  There are two primary causes: 

1. Lack of Database Communication

Often times, a company's active user database, such as their employee or HR database does not communicate with their access control system seamlessly.  If those two databases do not share information, then the process for activating and deactivating users and credentials usually involves two steps. 

Step One:  Enroll/Remove them from HR
Step Two: Enroll/Remove them from Access Control System

This is not very effective, as any time the second step is missed, cards remain active in the system long after the user has left. 

2. Badge Re-Issuance

Many times cardholders lose badges and ask for reprints, forgetting to have their old cards deactivated at that time.  If the system doesn't support automatic deactivation of old credentials as soon as a new one is printed, the old badge can stay active in the system forever, creating an imbalance in the number of active cards and cardholders. 

How do we fix it?

1. If the access control database can "sync" up with the customer's existing cardholder database, like Active Directory or HR, then this allows for more of a single-step activation and deactivation process.  Once a person has been enrolled or removed from the HR database, they will no longer have active access priviliges in the access control system either.  This is far easier for all parties involved - and much more secure. 

2. Look for door access systems that automatically deactivate old badges as soon as a new badge is printed.  This will help to eliminate the issue with users having numerous credentials associated with their record in the system. 


Lindsay Cornell is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc. BadgePass manufactures cutting edge Door Access, Photo ID, and Visitor Tracking software. Visit www.badgepass.com for more information.

What are the Benefits of a Photo ID System?

Getting serious about your organization’s security?  Beyond offering visual identification, Photo ID badges can be used for a variety of applications from Electronic Door Access to Cafeteria Point of Sale Systems.  How can you utilize photo IDs to help increase security in your facility? 

Employee Morale

In larger companies and organizations, photo IDs often help to encourage familiarity among staff members.  Once a policy has been instituted mandating the wearing of Photo IDs at all times, employees often feel more secure and more confident approaching employees in other departments.  Photo IDs can instill a sense of community among employees and often encourage people to approach those in the building not wearing IDs to ensure they belong. 

Access Control

Sure, you may be printing Photo IDs for everyone right now, but have you considered using those IDs to access doors within your facility?  By printing badges on a smart or proximity cards, you can electronically control which doors certain employees have access to, thereby eliminating the need for manual key locks.  Without a valid credential, employees will not be granted access to those doors.  Further, you can restrict access to doors certain employees should not be in, like the IT or Server Room.  Best of all, if an employee loses an ID badge, you can deactivate that card’s privileges and print them another!  Without rekeying an entire facility, there is no way to “deactivate” a lost key. 

Visitor Safety

Once you’ve identified all of the employees within your building, it may be time to consider a visual form of ID for all of your visitors as well.  Visitor Management Systems that print temporary ID badges are an easy and effective way to check in visitors electronically while also printing them a badge that they can wear during their visit.  This helps to easily identify those who are guests and also helps employees to feel comfortable approaching visitors without badges and escorting them to the main check-in desk to be registered. 

Other Applications

Feel free to get creative with your photo ID!  Do you have a Time and Attendance system that requires a barcode or magnetic stripe for employees to clock in and out each day?  Are you thinking of instituting a Point of Sale system in your cafeteria that allows for employees to purchase meals with their ID card?  All of these things are entirely possible, depending on the card design and technology you choose to use with your badges.  Whenever you choose to purchase a Photo ID system, think of all the possible applications you may want to implement in the future and keep those in mind when designing your cards. 

Lindsay Cornell is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc.  BadgePass offers secure ID Badging, Visitor Management and Access Control software.  For more information, visit www.badgepass.com. 

Is Your Current Two-Step Enrollment Process a Security Risk?

In recent news, it was announced that a 19 year old used his old ID badge from a program he took part in at AOL to gain access to the facility for two months after the program had ended!  He lived in the building day and night, using his old access credential to gain access to different areas on the campus.  It was nearly two months before a security guard caught him and kicked him out. 

Stories like this beg the question, "How could something like this have happened?" 

The reality is, this happens every single day!  We just don't always hear about it because these stories don't always take place at high profile locations like AOL Headquarters and don't usually involve two-month-long squatters.  But not deactivating security privileges in Card Access Control systems is a serious threat to an organization's security, and it gets overlooked all the time! 

Think about your own access control system.  How do you add and remove people from the system?  If you are like most customers that I talk to on a regular basis, you probably print your ID badges in one location and then employees are asked to take those new credentials to a seperate location, like Security, to have their access control privileges activated in that system.  It is typically a two-step process. 

The same thing happens when a person leaves the company.  The first database they are removed from is HR or Payroll.  (You and I both know that person isn't getting a paycheck anymore!)  Then, someone in HR sends an email to a person in security, notifying them to deactivate that person's access rights in the system.  Again, we are back to that two-step process. 

This works fine if your security personnel are always at work and constantly checking their emails.  But what happens when they go on vacation for a week and miss all of those emails?  Or when they are at lunch and overlook the email about the terminated employee when they return from their break?  Circumstances like those are the ones we often forget to account for when implementing security systems like Access Control, yet they play a critical role in our organizations' security! 

When choosing to implement a Door Access system, be sure to think about the way that credentials will be activated and deactivated in the system. Ask yourself a few simple questions:

- Is there an easy way to maintain the current database of active cardholders?
- Can you import new employees into the system easily? 
- If you deactivate someone in HR, is there a way for their credential to be automatically deactivated?

No matter what the size of your organization, security is always a concern. The more automated the credentialing process is at your facility, the less likely you are to have issues like the recent security breach at AOL. 

Read the full story about the AOL security breach here.

Lindsay Cornell is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc. BadgePass manufactures cutting edge ID Badging, Visitor Management and Access Control software. Visit www.badgepass.com for more information.

Tips for Printing Quality Photo IDs

When printing quality Photo IDs, it is important to know what information, and how much information, will be included on your Photo ID. The elements included on your Photo ID will help determine the features you should look for in your Photo ID System.

Basic Photo ID

Custom card design – Photo ID software will help you design a card from scratch using your own images, graphics and logos – creating a unique and custom card that best fits the needs of your organization.

Cardholder information – Easily add cardholder information to your ID cards! You can connect to your existing database information and/or choose to enroll users via Driver’s License Scanning.

Photo – Whether you are looking for high quality images or a simple webcam, adding a photo to your card design will ensure an extra level of security.

Barcode – Barcodes are a cost effective way to include data on your cards that can be scanned and used in other systems, such as time and attendance or cafeteria POS and vending.

Advanced Photo ID

Signature capture – A signature pad will allow you to electronically capture the signature of each cardholder for placement within the card design.

Smartcards – There are many types of technology cards, such as contactless smartcards, that can be store cardholder information for use in other systems, like Access Control.

Magnetic stripe – Magnetic strips are another way to include data on your cards that can be scanned and used in other systems.

Lamination – Laminating printers apply a thin film to the card with heat and pressure during printing to protect against wear.

The more secure you want your credentials to be, the more advanced your Photo ID software requirements will be.  Take all of these things into consideration when choosing which system to implement in your own organization. 

Lindsay Cornell is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc. BadgePass manufactures cutting edge ID Badging, Visitor Management and Access Control software. Visit www.badgepass.com for more information.

How Can I Streamline Enrollment into My Access Control System?

The biggest security risk in access control is dealing with a two-step process for the enrollment and/or removal of cards.  In most systems, cards are printed in one place and then cardholders must take their credential to another location to have their access rights granted before they have access to any doors in the facility.  The same two-step process occurs for deactivation of credentials.  The cardholder is removed from one database, but then an email notification or alert is sent to someone who then must manually remove them from a separate system before their credential is turned off in access control.  This two-step system is not only time consuming; it is putting thousands of organizations at risk for security breaches every day!

The best way to streamline the enrollment process is to start with badge issuance.  By integrating the assignment of access control rights and privileges into your badge issuance interface, you can eliminate the need for a second enrollment step.  Simply enroll a user’s information, capture a photo and print them a card.  While the card is printing, the smart card number can be read directly off the card during the print process and saved back to the database, preventing the user from having to manually enter that information.  Once the badge is printed, that credential, as well as the users’ access privileges, will be automatically activated in your access control system. 

Deactivation of badges can be simplified as well.  By tying your access control interface into your existing HR database, you can keep up to date with all of your currently active employees at any given time.  That way, as soon as an employee's information changes or new users are added/removed from the system, they will automatically be updated in your access control system.  This will keep you from manually having to go into your card access system to deactivate credentials whenever someone leaves or loses a badge.

Single-Step issuance.  It's really that easy!

Lindsay Cornell is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc. BadgePass manufactures cutting edge ID Badging, Visitor Management and Access Control software. Visit www.badgepass.com for more information.

5 Step Plan for Managing Campus Security

No matter what the campus or district size, schools nationwide always ask me, “What is the best place for me to start when putting together a safety and security plan for my district?”  At first, managing campus security can seem like a daunting task.  There are many critical components to keep in mind.  The school districts that I have worked with that have seen the best success have worked through these five steps toward managing their security. 

Step One: Establish a Visual Identification Policy

How are you currently identifying your students, faculty, staff and visitors?  If your campus does not have a visual ID for each one of these people currently, get a plan in place quickly.  Establishing a visual ID is the first step toward a more secure campus.  It offers everyone in the building a sense of security and community.  It also makes faculty feel more comfortable approaching those who aren’t wearing a badge and escorting them to the front office to a visitor check-in station where they can present ID and be assigned a visitor badge. 

Step Two: Do Not Underestimate the Importance of Managing Visitors

Whatever you do, you should not underestimate the importance of identifying your visitors.  Visitors are a critical component to your campus security.  Unidentified visitors can pose a severe threat to any organization or campus and without a record of their name and the time they checked in, you can never account for them having been in your building should an incident ever occur.  By ensuring all visitors check in every time they show up on campus AND wear a visitor badge at all times, you can easily differentiate guests from faculty with just a quick glance at their ID.

Step Three: Conduct Random Assessments to Ensure Everyone is Wearing Their ID

Appoint someone in each school to randomly count how many staff and students they see that aren’t wearing their ID badges.  If the system is being utilized properly, that number should be zero.  I have seen many schools implement penalties for faculty and students seen not wearing their photo ID on school grounds (ex: fines, detentions, etc).  If you implement a badging system and never enforce it after the fact, it will inevitably fall by the wayside.  Random or quarterly assessments help ensure your investment is protected. 

Step Four: Start Thinking about Physical Security

When thinking about physical security, the best place to start is the perimeter.  Can you traffic all of your visitors to one main entry point?  Hopefully you can and all those guests are checking in at your visitor manager station(s).  If you have one main entry point, have you locked down all your other doors during the school day, thereby guaranteeing that you won’t have any unwarranted guests or visitors? 

In the event of an event of emergency, do you have a lockdown or evacuation plan in place?  At this point, you have already implemented student, faculty and visitor identification badges on campus.  Your visitor management system should offer you an accurate list of all of the visitors on campus at any given moment.  If you combine that list with your other credentials, you can come up with a fantastic plan for better managing your evacuation policy and procedures. 

Step Five:  Implement Other Applications that Use Your ID Badges

In this day and age there are so many things you can do with ID badges besides using them as a means for photo identification.  The opportunities are almost endless.  Take your ID card to the next level with applications like access control, vending, cafeteria solutions, mustering, single sign on, etc. 

There are hundreds of applications available to you!  Explore your options and discover new ways to secure your campus and ensure the safety of your students and faculty, keeping in mind that the more integrated the solutions you choose to implement are, the easier they will be to manage. 

There is no guaranteed way to manage campus safety, but following these steps will help to guide you to a safer and more secure district for both students and faculty. 

Lindsay Cornell is the Director of Sales for BadgePass, Inc.  BadgePass manufactures cutting edge ID Badging, Visitor Management and Access Control software.  Visit www.badgepass.com for more information.