According to Cisco, 39 percent of IT professionals report encountering an employee accessing unauthorized areas of a company network or facility. These and other disturbing statistics regarding physical and logical security are having an impact on how organizations are protecting valuable data.

Along with video surveillance, access control systems and intrusion detection technologies, key management systems are proving to be highly effective in securing server rooms, individual racks and other sensitive areas within a facility. By controlling access to physical keys with a key management system, management can better ensure that only authorized individuals can enter secure areas.

Physical keys are secured in a tamper-proof cabinet and keys cannot be accessed until the system verifies that the user has specific permissions. The system’s automated tracking and reporting function provides a record of everyone who removed a key, when it was removed, and when it was returned to the key cabinet. Reports can run and be delivered automatically to management on a regular basis. In highly secure areas such as a server room, the system can be programmed with automatic email and SMS notifications to provide an immediate alert of an individual accessing a key or if a key has not been returned as scheduled. Mobile apps are also available to let authorized users see a wide range of live information and interact remotely with the system.

Key management systems can be integrated with access control systems to help reduce vulnerabilities caused by redundancy. Employees can be entered into (or removed from) the access control system, for example, with their credentials profile information, access group, etc. instantly transferred to the key management system. Through integration, the security system becomes greater than the whole of its parts and it becomes more streamlined and effective.

Read more on key management for data centers, or contact one of our experts today.