For anyone who has ever served in the armed forces, the base commissary is one of the great benefits of military life. Commissaries offer food and non-food items at reduced prices to military personnel. In addition to matching the high end public grocery stores in availability and quality of food and dry goods, today’s commissary stores match the technical operations side of the stores with state of the art security systems.

Security technology is commonplace in all grocery stores, whether public or military, and key control and management systems are commonly utilized. In commissaries, automated key control and management systems are used to maintain an orderly accounting and control of the building’s mechanical keys. Because commissaries are governed by the DoD’s Defense Commissary Agency, some practices may be different than in the public sector. For example, the opening and closing of the store or cash room access control must follow established policies and procedures that may be more stringent. The use of an automated key control and management system helps the commissary manager to ensure that these policies and procedures are followed. Among other capabilities, the system can be programmed to release keys only to authorized users during certain time periods and for allotted amounts of time.

Additionally, a key control system provides proof that procedures are followed because each time a key is accessed or returned to the key cabinet the system records the activity. Keys are secured to a specially designed locking device with a built-in memory chip. When a key is inserted or removed from a key slot, the memory chip data is stored for future reference. Key management systems can be further maximized with the addition of data management software to provide more detailed reports or programmed scheduling.

A key management system is ideal to help maintain compliance as well as security in many areas of a military base.