Managing the consequences of a natural disaster or other emergency is easier with preparedness activities in place. Planning for these activities includes knowing the facilities’ vulnerabilities, identifying resources, developing policies and procedures and so on, all of which can help lessen the impact of an occurrence.

When considering the implementation of an automated key control system, there are several points that need to be identified and addressed before that important final decision is made. Ultimately it comes down to four basic areas that can provide the foundation for a long-term successful key control and asset management plan. Those key parameters relate to key security, key access, key tracking and scalability.

In the past few years, key control and asset management systems have become a requirement throughout a broad spectrum of vertical markets including corporate, government, correctional facilities, healthcare and educational markets to name just a few. One of the enabling factors for this is the ability to manage all programming, remote functions and reports for the system with a software-driven solution. Both access control systems and customized client control software can interface with the application.

Before the advent and widespread use of electronic key control systems, key control was often a haphazard routine. Many organizations used an honor system to store and control building keys, while institutions such as correctional facilities or medical campuses used a more formal system requiring access activity to be hand-written in a log book. The procedures were often ineffective, mostly laborious and frequently left the organization exposed and vulnerable because keys could not be one hundred percent accounted for.

It has been said that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail and nowhere is this more true than in the management of physical security operations. In any organization, growth can trigger the need for significant changes and/or upgrades to physical security systems, including established key control systems. For the scalability of key control, as with other systems, the degree to which the needed changes can be met is determined by the plans put in place.