During times of economic turmoil, security directors and systems integrators are being asked to secure more for less -- in other words, securing more of the company’s assets but with fewer resources.

In these unsettled times companies also want to make sure that, when layoffs become unavoidable, an employee’s access to both critical as well as routine assets is tightly controlled -- denying access to laid off employees as rapidly as possible.

Furthermore, when companies are acquired and merge with the acquiring company, incompatible physical access control systems (PACS) can be a cause of expensive duplication. The temptation is great to align the acquired company with the corporate standard PACS, but what should be done with unwired but important access points such as remote storage facilities or data center racks?

In the past, security directors were forced to choose between integrating the different PACS or putting in stand-alone locks and then fronting the money for later upgrades. With a new technology concept called card-connected access control, users can avoid both the large install costs upfront, as well as the maintenance fees.

Here’s how: First, card-connected locks require no wiring or panel infrastructure so installation and equipment costs are significantly reduced. And unlike some of the electronic lock solutions on the market, they do not require frequent visits by security personnel to update access lists and retrieve logs. In addition, card-connected locks offer the added benefit when they replace “brass key” locks by providing central management and monitoring, access audits and a less expensive alternative to managing keys and re-keying locks.

Card-connected access control technologies use employee smart cards to extend central access control to standalone and mobile (e.g., padlocks) locks. Within a card-connected access control system, standalone electronic locks and physical access control systems communicate by reading and writing digitally signed data to and from smart cards. In this way, cardholders become an extension of the physical access network, where the cards, instead of wires, carry information to and from the standalone locks.

As such, card-connected technologies bring the benefits of smart cards and strong cryptography to the world of physical access control to expand the number of assets which can be cost-effectively protected. In fact, the breakthrough achieved by card-connected technologies provides some of the best of both worlds -- the limited up-front investment of standalone electronic locks and the benefits of wired locks managed through a central PACS system.