There are three primary areas or classifications of security controls. These include management security, operational security, and physical security controls.
Management security is the overall design of your controls. Sometimes referred to as administrative controls, these provide the guidance, rules, and procedures for implementing a security environment.
What is Operational Security?
Operational Security is the effectiveness of your controls. Sometimes referred to as technical controls, these include access controls, authentication, and security topologies applied to networks, systems, and applications.
What is Physical Security?
Physical security is the protection of personnel, data, hardware, etc., from physical threats that could harm, damage, or disrupt business operations or impact the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of systems and/or data.
An effective information security program includes controls from each area. Controls are selected based on the organization’s determination of risk and how it chooses to address each risk. For a given risk, controls from one or more of these areas may be applied. For example, an organization may identify the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive data stored on an internal database server. The organization might then apply physical security controls to restrict access to the building, operational security controls to prevent and detect unauthorized login to the server, and management security controls to define who is authorized to access the data. Risk is unique to each organization, therefore the controls designed to address a given risk will be unique as well.
LBMC Information Security provides strong foundations for risk-management decisions. We design our security risk assessments to arm your organization with the information it needs to fully understand your risks and compliance obligations. Learn more about our Risk Assessments / Current State Assessments.
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At one point or another, every office will need to invite visitors inside. Whether you’re showing investors your facility, guiding tours through the office or hiring contractors to fix a piece of equipment, non-employees will have to come through your doors. Relying on classic versions of visitor management, however, is simply not enough in today’s competitive business world, where innovations improve workplace management on an almost daily basis. Companies that want to remain secure, prove their solid safety procedures and leave a positive impression with customers and investors should consider implementing an access control system with strong policies regarding visitors.
Visitors are largely a beneficial presence, but even the most humble offices still have private information and sensitive data that they would prefer to keep away from outsiders, especially ones who might use it for less than positive reasons. By improving your current visitor management system, you can impress visitors while demonstrating just how secure your facility is. Use this article to make sure your system is up to date and ready to guard your space.
Unlike the old-fashioned method of logging visitors by hand, access control systems allow you to keep track of who is in your space and where they are at all times. Access control works by assigning badges to the people who use your space. Encoded in each of the badges, which can take the form of swipeable cards, RFID chips or even QR codes, is a unique, identifying number for that cardholder. Each ID number has a designated level of access, which allows cardholders to access certain amenities based on clearance level, the time of day and any other factor that you would like to monitor. Cloud-based access control systems integrate with visitor management software, like Envoy.
Visitor access control allows you to assign temporary badges to visitors. These badges are designed to expire after a certain amount of time and allow you to decide where, exactly, each visitor can go within your facility. Instead of turning visitors loose, you can control their movements and even revoke their access if they stay inside too long. A certain feeling of trust is inspired in visitors when they enter your building, where the staff at the front desk welcomes them with a warm smile and a personalized badge that is entered into a visitor pass management system. As a first impression, this action makes your organization appear careful, diligent and well-managed. On your end, this action ensures that everyone who enters your space has entered identifying information into your system, meaning that they are responsible for the actions they take once they’re inside. The value of electronic visitor access control is not only about giving that special client treatment. Among other perks, this step amplifies the worth of your current business, creating an extra real estate opportunity. Office buildings with proper visitor management systems often sell or rent for higher rates than comparable buildings without this resource.
With today’s abundant, affordable technology, it is so easy to use a visitor badge system and let computers do the work for you that it can be hard to imagine why any office wouldn’t choose to put an electronic access control at the front door. Modern software can make the entryways and other access points into watchdogs, and adding further checkpoints within your facility allows you to continue implementing access control throughout multiple offices or areas inside your building. Installing a separate reader on each door, allows you to know exactly who tried to enter and when they did. Personalized badges enable this.
Data recorded from each access control reader, including data from visitor badges, is stored in your system, so managers or trained security staff can access the reports and read the events log as evidence for employee and client movement. A visitor badge system is like having a discreet, watchful eye that automates your security functions. You and your personnel can worry less, allowing you to spend more time on work without having to deal with complex security tasks. It’s simple, but powerful, and your entire office will be able to work more effectively knowing that they are safe.
Knowing that you have an office visitor management system also scares off potential intruders and burglars who might want to target your facility. A common tactic used by these criminals is doing unannounced recon visits to offices that they might want to target. They take note of each office’s security measures, deciding if it’s worth the trouble to try to infiltrate the space. If they notice that their visit is only being recorded on paper, they might be more likely to attempt a burglary. Access control systems and proper visitor management, which are often combined with video surveillance, is more likely to keep them away and sends them out to search for more vulnerable offices as potential targets.
Don't underrate the impact of visitor management systems on productivity and resource control as well. Tracking and measuring data extracted from your visitor management system offers direct insight into the number of visitors you get on multiple time scales and can help you direct your focus toward your most active client base. Knowing the movements of visitors, too, can help you optimize your office for people who are coming inside. Sometimes, a proper visitor management system is not only a convenience, but also a necessary tool. You may just need to meet specific legal requirements and standards for safety, especially if you’re the owner of a company that handles sensitive data or client information. You have a very real need for safety, and a special license or certification for working in riskier industries, such as healthcare, finance, and approved vendors, is impossible without having a reliable office visitor management system. It’s an investment that will help you reap rewards in the long run.
Checking this data also helps you decide who should be invited back to your space. Time spent inside is a solid indicator of how effective a maintenance team has been, for example. If a certain low-stakes repair takes just half an hour for one contractor but two hours for another maintenance company, the visitor access control data can help you choose the more efficient one for a long-term contract. Similarly, if a visitor triggers an alarm within your space, you can revoke their access and refuse to give them the ability to enter again.
Employees spend a large part of their days in the office and, as an employer, you probably want this time to be spent productively. The entire facility should enable hard and thorough work and bring out the best in all of your staff, in addition to being accessible, safe and energy efficient. Visitor access control, then, is an incredibly important issue to consider, especially through this lens. Although the comfort may be a priority for an office building that only requires a low or intermediate level of scrutiny, an office visitor management system can help in both ease of use and physical security.
If your office building is classified as low- or medium-level risk, the data that allows you to do business is most likely easily shared or even publicly disclosed, at least to a certain limit. The loss of this confidential data, then, would not harm your reputation or finances critically, or at least enough to drive you out of business. However, you should not be lax about protecting this information. It is better, after all, to avoid breaches entirely than to react to them. As a general rule, office buildings of these security levels can avoid the hassle associated with creating an excessive visitor access control system, especially one that would require special licensing or multi-factor authentication of visitors. But even when you don’t need to meet the necessary criteria for legal security audits, your visitor management system should include the following minimum elements:
- A front desk visitor pass management system
- Dedicated visitor management system software
- A visitor badge printer, which should be able to encode paper badges
- Printable access cards that work with your existing card readers
- A video surveillance system to monitor the building perimeter, access points and public areas
- Parking lot or garage access control
- A central visitor access control board or system
- Motion detectors and other alarm inputs
- Access readers at each critical access point
- A method of contacting the proper authorities within your system in the event of a break-in or breach
Depending on the needs of your business, you can decide to upgrade or downsize these system requirements, but this is a good place to start. For example, small businesses that operate out of residential buildings and educational or institutional organizations will likely be at the bottom of the scale of security classifications, while corporate outposts and industrial, chemical or research-based businesses will be near the top of the scale. For very large commercial buildings, it is important to consider how an automated visitor management system can be integrated into the overall building automation system. You can also choose to include options for the monitoring and control of HVAC and lighting systems as a measure of energy efficiency.
High-security office buildings typically require the more advanced protection of data and other assets by law. Part of these requirements are met by employing trained staff and conducting regular reporting and audits with official authorities. In case you need a physical security audit example. A crucial part of this, too, is a rigorous visitor management system. The loss of data or an attack on the system would significantly endanger the future, safety and budget of a any high-risk organization, and such an event could also adversely impact the people and resources that are important to stakeholders, clients and investors. All of this means that the risk that arises from an inadequate visitor access control system is enough to potentially result in a major litigation or investigations, massive financial losses, and detrimental consequences to the health and safety of your employees.
Imagine, for a moment, the effects of an improper visitor management system in a building that houses a laboratory. If anyone can simply walk inside or access high-security areas because of a flawed access system, burglars or hackers could walk away with highly sensitive information or industry secrets, which could bring ruin to any business. Obviously, it’s better to avoid this type of situation entirely. When you are in charge of designing a visitor management system for a high-risk office, follow the lead of public buildings to create a security framework that fits your needs, adjusting the design to the most advantageous form for your own business. Use these important security requirements when you’re setting up the visitor management system in a high-security office:
- Perimeter protection, including appropriate fencing, turnstiles, doors and locks
- Security staff to support video surveillance and triggered alarms
- Authority-based visitor access control, which is the most rigorous type of this kind of system
- Comprehensive, clearly delineated levels of security clearance for staff
- Emergency escapes and alarms at all access points
- An incident response plan with regular testing
- Frequent staff security training
- Strong parking standards with personalized passes for visitors, clients and staff
- Two-factor authentication for secure rooms and areas
- Backups of the visitor management system log reports
A dedicated visitor management system is the secret weapon of any secure office. While much energy is spent trying to make the employee experience safer, paying attention to visitors helps to keep them from using your trust as a tool to gain access to your secure files and data. It’s worth the extra effort to spend time creating a comprehensive plan, complete with access control, dedicated security measures and plenty of backups for each component.