Liability exposure is a critical concern of public and/or private businesses. While maximizing insurance coverage helps to alleviate financial risk, it’s an even smarter move to minimize the risk of an incident occurring in the first place.

Opera houses, performing arts centers, museums and other cultural facilities tend to be large, spread out complexes with a maze of corridors, work rooms, storage areas, loading docks and other non-public spaces in addition to the areas that are open to visitors. To establish a comprehensive and efficient physical security system for these kinds of facilities, management should look to implement a blend of automated technologies including a key control and management system.

The market for automated key control systems has increasingly expanded as end users across a broad plane discover the benefits of controlling access to valuable keys. New markets for automated key control and management systems now go beyond traditional applications in the corrections, healthcare, education, gaming or multi-family markets as well as specific applications such as automotive dealerships.

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.