A simple path to smarter physical access management

A modern IP access control system can help you better manage who has access to your buildings and sites. And over time, you’ll have the freedom to add innovative technologies to continuously improve your day-to-day operations and security.

As you map out future upgrades, you might consider adding new systems and sensors such as biometric readers or mobile credentials. These can add value to your security and operations—but it's important to have a unified security system where everything can be managed from one place.

Layered on top of your access control system, a physical access management solution helps to automate and enhance decisions and processes that center around your company’s physical security policies and access rights. This solution can alleviate bottlenecks in daily operations and improve efficiency as well as compliance company-wide.

CHECKLIST

 

An access control system is helpful. But is it enough? 

An access control system goes a long way in helping to secure your organization. Your operators can use the system to handle tasks like setting cardholder privileges, deactivating access credentials, creating door schedules and rules, and so on. 

But even the most advanced access control solutions aren’t designed to streamline your workflows. That’s because your operators still have many manual, time-consuming tasks to handle when managing physical access control. Here are a few:  

Onboarding employees

When a new employee is hired or an existing employee changes job, cardholder data and privileges need to be added or updated. Doing this a few times a day or week adds up and saps your operators’ time. Since employees usually need immediate access, operators may also rush to get it all done and unknowingly make mistakes along the way.

Handling temporary requests

Sometimes employees need access to a certain room, area, or building, for a specific job or time frame. It’s then up to your operators to check with the department head or manager to validate the request and set permissions. It’s a long back-and-forth process that creates undue delays and needs to be properly tracked.

Remembering to revoke those temporary privileges adds to the challenge. While some set reminders in their online calendars, others manually track ad hoc requests in Excel or a paper notepad. Any mishaps or distractions that get in the way of this process slow operational efficiency and create vulnerabilities for your organization.

Completing regular auditing

Some highly regulated industries or company policies require frequent access control reporting and auditing. This can mean ensuring only those with the right training, roles, and security clearances have access to certain rooms or sites and detailing the context behind exceptions or ad hoc requests.

Pulling those details together may require your admin team to dig through paperwork, retrieve emails, or compile data in excel spreadsheets. Regardless, it’s a time-consuming process that is prone to errors and hinders your compliance.

The list of manual access control tasks doesn’t end there. Other jobs like handling contractor permissions, visitor requests, and VIP guests all require additional time and attention from your team. 

Since these tasks happen so frequently and randomly, it’s easy for your operators to get sidetracked and make mistakes that put your organization at risk. Relying on one or two people to handle these tasks can also create a bottleneck, reducing operational efficiency across different jobs and teams.

EBOOK

 

How ClearID empowers your stakeholders

ClearID helps you centrally manage the access rights of your employees and contractors while automating many manual tasks to align with your company’s policies. It does this by using attribute-based provisioning, so you can automatically grant or revoke access rights based on specific employee attributes including department, location, job title and description, seniority, pay grade, training, certifications, security clearance, and more.

 

 

If an employee who was working in the marketing department in San Diego transfers to the Montreal office, their access rights will be automatically adjusted. Relying on attributes and policies means that you don't have to manually provision each employee their access.

CUSTOMER STORY

 

A smarter access management solution takes automation even further. Here are a few more ways your organization can benefit from unifying your access control with ClearID:

Self-service requests

Your employees can access a self-service cloud-based portal to easily input requests for temporary access, updated attributes, visitor or contractor access, and more. Managers or department heads can also use the portal to schedule and complete access reviews for their teams at any time.

Automated approval workflows

When an access request is submitted, the assigned area approver or decision-maker will be automatically alerted. They can go into the portal to review the request and then either approve or deny the request, or make adjustments to the permissions such as limiting the timeframe. They can also add notes as to why access is being granted or revoked to ensure full auditability later on.

Standardized onboarding policies

Once the cardholder is created in the access control system and all attributes such as department, job, title, and location are assigned, ClearID ensures all relevant access rights are granted per the company’s security policies. This minimizes manual mishaps and ensures access rights are always up to date.

Consider deploying a physical access management solution

Whether you have a Synergis™ access control system or in the process of migrating, adding ClearID can digitize and automate your access control processes and policies. That’s because ClearID is 100% unified with Synergis. This ensures all actions are synchronized between the two systems. More than that, benefit from cloud-based access management for added accessibility, scalability, security, and cost savings.

By unifying Synergis access control system with ClearID everything from onboarding and offboarding employees and handling temporary access requests, to generating your audit reports becomes easier, more efficient, and compliant.