By any standard, cruise ships have always been a model for ensuring the safety and security of passengers and crew at sea. And many of the same physical security implementations that are found in a land-based hospitality/entertainment environment are equally effective on cruise ships, including key control and asset management solutions.
High tech key cabinets and lockers provide controlled access to keys, cards, cashboxes, and other valuable assets used on board the ship and secured when not in use. The cabinets and lockers can only be opened by users with the proper authorization code (either finger identification or numerical code), and cannot be manipulated or easily tampered with. The system automatically records the access history of all transaction activities including user, date and time of access/return.
To meet a variety of needs, cabinets can be configured with the exact components needed for the application, such as key modules, modules for credit or access cards, or with various sizes of lockers to manage larger objects as efficiently as managing keys. For example, the ship’s security control room may be equipped with a cabinet that includes one large locker, two small lockers and an 16-key module. Alternatively, the cabinet configuration for the ship’s casino office may be lockers for storing and securing chips, cards and other gaming materials and a blank module to be filled at a later time. The combination of modules is entirely up to the user, providing the ability to customize and also change the system to meet specific needs.
Management software is available to optimize the installing, programming, customizing, maintaining and reporting capabilities of the systems. Additionally, the collected information can be integrated with the ship’s access control system data base for added safety procedures. For follow up and reporting purposes, the combined data trail can assist the ship’s officers by providing valuable information in the case of an incident.
