The Five Phases of Access Control

The purpose of access control is to grant entrance to a building or office only to those who are authorized to be there. The deadbolt lock, along with its matching brass key, was the gold standard of access control for many years; however, modern businesses want more. Yes, they want to control who passes through their doors, but they also want a way to monitor and manage access. Keys have now passed the baton to computer-based electronic access control systems that provide quick, convenient access to authorized persons while denying access to unauthorized ones.

Access control systems aim to control who has access to a building, facility, or a “for authorized persons only” area. This is typically carried out by assigning employees, executives, freelancers, and vendors to different types of groups or access levels. Everyone may be able to use their access cards to enter the main door but not to areas containing secure or privileged information.

 

Beyond the obvious reason, physical security, there are several reasons a business or medical facility might need an access control system.

 

Compliance:

.Hospitals, doctors’ offices, and health insurance companies need to comply with HIPAA health data regulations.

.Banks, insurance companies, and any business that accepts and processes credit cards is subject to PCI credit card data regulations.

.SaaS providers, data centers, or any company hoping to maintain SOC2 cybersecurity standards.

 

IP Data:

Businesses that deal with privileged data and intellectual property, such as software developers, entrepreneurs, startups, and pharmaceutical companies need to not only control who comes into their facilities, but which areas they are allowed to access.

 

5 Phases

The 5 phases in an access control system allow it to both rapidly and effectively process users through a structure while documenting who was where and when.

1. Authorization is the phase that turns strangers into members. The first step is to define company policy; determine what people can and cannot do. This should include who has access to which door(s), and whether members of the organization can share access.

The next step is role-based access control (RBAC). By assigning roles to users, they get a certain set of assigned privileges. This comes in handy for administrators since they don’t have to individually update every user, should something change.

Most organizations use employee directories in tandem with RBAC, since these lists include all authorized employees as well as their access levels.

2. Authentication goes one level deeper than authorization. In this phase, members present to a door reader whatever badge, token, or credential they were given upon being authorized. The reader will check its validation to determine whether or not it should unlock the electric lock on the door in question.

3. Access: Now that the credentials have been authenticated, the access tools available at this stage make sure everyone gets in the right door, at the right time, faster and easier.

Unlock- Upon validation, the presenter can unlock whatever she wants to access. This can happen by pushing a button, presenting an access card, fob, or badge that requests access.

Trigger- Once the request to enter has been received by the access control system, the access is triggered, typically in the form of a door unlock.

Infrastructure- If the door unlocks, multiple events are tracked at once: The user was correctly authenticated, the user triggered an unlock, the door opened and the door closed.

4. Manage

This phase helps the administrator meet several challenges, including adding new access points, onboarding and offboarding users, maintaining security, and troubleshooting problems. Let’s examine some advantages.

Scale:

Cloud-based access control systems can help startups and small businesses when they expand to new offices or additional offices by providing flexible and modular extensions of the existing setup.

Monitor:

Online access control systems send real-time alerts to administrators or security should any irregularity or attempted breach take place at any access point, allowing them to investigate immediately and record the event.

Troubleshoot:

Modern access control systems allow administrators to remotely configure permissions, or seek support from the vendor, should access points or users have issues—a huge advantage over locally-hosted systems.

 

5. Audit

Auditing physical access control is useful for all types of businesses. In addition, it helps certain sectors meet special requirements.

Scale:

Businesses can perform regularly-scheduled system reviews to make sure everything on the access control system is set up properly. It can also tell them if someone no longer employed by the company has been inadvertently left in the system.

Suspicious Events:

Since many access points are routinely tracked during any access event, auditing can prove useful to security officers when investigating unusual behavior. The data can be used to flag or highlight unusual access behavior or analyze it against historical data.

Compliance Reports:

Companies that process sensitive data like patient healthcare information, banking financial reports, or credit card payments must deal with audit requirements in the access control space when filing compliance reports in accordance with HIPAA, SOC2 or PCI. Some special categories like cyber security or ISO certifications also require managed and auditable access control. The audit phase can pull up the proper data for these periodic reports.

 

Security Technology of South Texas is a local leader in access control, video surveillance, and community management systems in the South Texas area. Get in touch with us today to see what we can do to help secure your location.

STST Inc.
Please contact us through email at admin@gostst.com
Through our website form :

Or by phone at  210-446-4863   24/7

Machine Learning to Improve Access Control: Part 2

The “Covid Factor”
 
Covid-19 has changed the way both people and organization view nearly every aspect of interaction almost overnight. From opening the door and interacting with access control measures to rethinking how much of business even needs to be conducted on-site, this re-imagining has actually come at an opportune time relative to recent advancements in access control. Contactless systems are the preferred method for ingress and egress, and this has already been a trend in the industry for some time.

Whether it be an office, hospital, university campus or industrial plant, compliance requires either eliminating manual door activation, for example a hand pressing a switch or using a handle to open a door, and replacing with an automated “no-touch” solution or, when that isn’t desired or possible, enabling the manual door activation to be done with another part of the body (i.e., arm, elbow, hip, knee or foot), which is referred to as a manual ‘low-touch’ solution.
The use of touchless switches (also referred to as “no-touch” or “hands-free” switches) to activate automatic door operators or de-energize locking devices is increasing at an unprecedented rate. It’s very likely that touchless switches could become more common than push plate switches in the not too distant future.

How AI Will Power The Change
 
The addition of cameras to high risk portals has been an early example of this integration trend, enabling managers to be able to tie what took place at an entrance to a corresponding alarm condition such as a forced or jammed (propped) entrance/ exit. This capability can be further enhanced by analytics – for example, facial recognition could be used to determine which individuals might have set off the alarm condition. Analytics and other sensors could count the number of people that move through a portal during rush periods in “open” mode and also determine that a crowd has gathered and more doors/portals need to be opened to address the burst in demand for ingress or egress.
“From a design perspective there is an increasing demand, due to COVID-19, for touchless access. In this case, the integration of technologies and the use of machine learning can be leveraged to provide efficient, safe and secure access. Machine learning and AI are well adapted to leveraging data sets and, over time, gaining an understanding of conditions and matching them to access control and individual requirements,” said Salvatore D’Agostino, the CEO of IDmachines.

D’Agostino sees the convergence of AI into security spaces, not known for their reliance on analytic data, reshaping the landscape. AI can be used as a proactive step against intrusion at a security entrance like a swing door or turnstile and integrated into the access control and video security systems to provide rich analytics and situational awareness.

Emphasizing “What is Going to Happen”

 

“It has long been known that there are often patterns to humans, and to the same extent, enterprise behavior. Access control, surveillance, and intrusion detection systems collect large amounts of data that is often stored and then deleted without much analysis.
Enterprises are now more attuned to the ability to leverage this ‘big’ data. These are evolving now to common data formats, real-time analytics and predictive tools. There seems like there would be a similar evolution in the capabilities of physical security systems where it is not so much what is happening at a turnstile, swing door or entryway, but what is going to happen,” D’Agostino said. “This would leverage the existing systems, sensors and data collection capabilities and use big data, and analytics to drive management and monitoring. The more that physical security systems adopt standard data types, sets and structures (using syslog for logging is a simple example) and the more intelligent these systems become, the more intelligence can be put into predictive analytics.”
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Security Technology of South Texas is a local leader in access control, video surveillance, and community management systems in the South Texas area. Get in touch with us today to see what we can do to help secure your location.

STST Inc.
Please contact us through email at admin@gostst.com
Through our website form :

Or by phone at  210-446-4863   24/7

Machine Learning to Improve Access Control: Part 1

  
With the evolving dynamics of cloud storage and the ability to harness and proactively employ an ever-increasing pool of big data, AI in the form of machine learning and deep learning has become a disruptive technological force in the physical security industry. Advanced AI and low-cost network resources have significantly impacted video surveillance, which has been among the biggest beneficiaries of faster processing and impactful analytics. Building automation, fire systems, intrusion detection, and physical and network access control are all starting to incorporate AI functionality.

AI is increasingly taking a role in making exterior and interior entrances more secure.This technology is moving towards improving system functionalities, including: distinguishing people from objects at a facility perimeter and interior entrances; deterring piggybacking; identifying and analyzing potentially lethal objects and dangerous people; and helping to define secure areas in and around buildings creating a more defensive risk posture for a location.

Convergence

As technology continues to converge and the edges of different traditionally separate technologies start to merge, we face the challenge of how AI may practically support entry solutions such as security revolving doors, turnstiles, and swing doors. A disconnect between the objectives of the building owner and building code regulations can further complicate the security blueprint. But with 5G communications on the horizon, at least for those in major metro areas, multiple systems will be able to communicate seamlessly and instantly. With billions of connected IP devices generating data, Machine Learning systems will have an enormous amount of data to run through algorithms and improve performance in the budding field of intelligent access control.

Because legacy security entrances do not have AI built into their technology, integrating intelligence into secured entrances requires a collaborative effort with a third party solutions provider. Video analytics are increasingly deployed to address use cases such as people detection, piggybacking, dangerous object detection and facial recognition among other issues relevant to secured entrances. The increased integration of AI providers with traditional security entrance partners has resulted in improvements, such as price, speed, ease of use and usability. It also includes the use of machine learning to improve algorithms over traditional modeling and correlation approaches, and integration with other systems and sensors.

The Plan Moving Forward
Security entrances and mantrap portals often combine a number of systems, sensors and requirements. Portals by their nature are an integrated solution combining access control, video surveillance, mechanical hardware, sensors and design. These systems are a micro-scale example of what we can expect to see rolling out in the next decade. As devices move to wireless and 5G increases the throughput and number of IP devices, trillions of data points will be created for algorithms to process.

The limiting factor at that point will be only processing power and the limitations of human ingenuity in programming. Nonetheless, the access control, video surveillance, alarm, and community management/smart home technologies will begin to bleed into one-another and be able to intelligently share relevant information to improve performance, all with almost zero latency. The implications, should this play out ideally, include hybrid systems capable of operating nearly without human intervention, a reduction in the need for monitoring center services, and better response and accuracy for access control and security systems alike.

The Future of Thermographic Cameras

As government and business leaders start to talk about “returning to normal,” and looking to thermal cameras to help, questions remain about how and whether the latest technology can help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Across industries, everyone is looking for the right tools to help detect, slow and eventually stop SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. By now we’ve all come to recognize that resuming operations in any way will require demonstrating measures to protect the health and wellbeing of people in a variety of situations, including travel and work.

One proposed solution is thermal scanners. Unlike most medical imaging approaches, infrared (IR) thermography doesn’t require irradiation or expensive equipment, and presents no health hazard. Infrared radiation emitted from our skin can be detected and used along with information about the ambient environment to estimate core body temperature — which may indicate someone is running a fever, a common early symptom of COVID-19.  While thermal cameras can’t detect a virus or a specific infection, they can help by quickly narrowing down a large pool of possibly infected individuals. And today, this represents the only viable non-contact mass screening approach for fever. The accuracy of the infrared system can, however, be affected by human, environmental and equipment variables. Understanding this multitude of variables — including the ways in which the science, technology and applications themselves interact — will help both users and system makers deliver the best results.

 

Consideration #1: Think about the method

Teledyne Thermometer-1

Thermal detection has been used for fever detection for 20 years now. While older thermometers and thermal cameras, including the type used to detect a different coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), had their weaknesses,  newer generations deliver significant performance improvements. More intelligent systems now offer features such as real-time calibration to ambient temperature with sub-degree °C accuracy, providing more accurate readings far more quickly than older generations.

Newer camera systems are also more user-friendly and more reliable, featuring automated target recognition, improved resolution, pairing with a visible-light camera, automated alarms for febrile cases, and clearer outlining of hot spots. This higher degree of granularity improves insight, allowing for a more efficient and faster screening process, and provides on-site health professionals with necessary information to take additional steps when required.

 Teledyne Calibir-GXM-Feature-Set-1024x432

Advanced image processing features in new radiometric thermal cameras.

 

Consideration #2: Know your baselines

Because the environment can influence temperature measurements, some system makers have devised different ways to establish functional baselines. An early approach, recording a population baseline at each site on each day, proved too time- and resource-intensive. A newer approach, using a reference temperature source, or black body, offers evolutionary improvement. Designed to maintain itself at a specific temperature, the black body device allows the thermal camera system to automatically calibrate. Even better is a radiometric camera, which can interpret the intensity of an infrared signal reaching the camera. This requires more rigorous design and testing by the manufacturer, but it delivers much more precise measurements.

Teledyne Fever-Detection-System-Diagram

Diagram of a fever detection system with black body emitter

 

Consideration #3: Looking in the right place

While thermal cameras can only detect surface temperatures, different parts of the human body more closely correlate with body temperature. Based on recent scientific research, the most reliable spot in the human face is the canthus, the small corners over the tear duct of your eye where the upper and lower eyelids meet. This kind of precise targeting requires accurate pixel calibration capabilities.

 

Teledyne-Dalsa-Thermal-Imaging-1024x461

The best surface target for estimating core body temperature: the canthus at the inner eye

 

Consideration #4: Checking your performance         

Operating an IR fever screening system in the lab is one thing, but out in the field, the situation becomes more complex. Users need a camera system that is reliable and stable when it comes to critical performance factors like resolution, sensitivity and frame rate. Understanding the performance considerations when imaging a subject at a distance, for example, and realizing the minimum number of pixels required to get an accurate measurement are both essential in staging a fully optimal fever-detection platform.

 

Consideration #5: Finding your way in the “wild west” of thermal imaging in early 2020

People from the many industries that have been devastated by this pandemic – including travel, sports, manufacturing, food and hospitality, and entertainment — are looking for ways to reopen businesses safely while reducing the probability of a second wave of COVID-19. Deploying technology such as IR fever screening systems as part of a range of preventative measures will hopefully support that effort.

As is the case with any promising emergent technology, there is a fair degree of chaos around the nuanced considerations of system design and performance. What standards apply to IR fever-screening devices? Which are being enforced? Who makes them? Will they work? These questions will only be answered with time, and in the meanwhile your best bet is to go with a company that has the experience and expertise to properly implement these solutions for you.

Security Technology of South Texas has been a leading Systems Integrator in the greater South Texas area for over 7 years. To get your location assessed and a custom solution designed for thermographic cameras contact us 24/7.

 

Call us 24/7 at 210-446-4863