Opening the Doors to Education

Over the past year, there have been significant changes in the education sector as schools have been forced to deal with remote learning scenarios, hybrid teaching environments, and stringent health monitoring policies. And now, as schools reopen their doors for the year, security and safety have taken center stage due to the evolving threats and challenges these facilities face and the ongoing effects of COVID-19.

While a school’s technology infrastructure must be flexible and intelligent enough to ensure robust safety protocols, they also require flexible solutions to scale as needs change and facilities quickly expand. The challenges these facilities face are varied and evolving. Because of this, school security encompasses so many measures designed to combat threats against people and property but also includes school safety, which incorporates protecting students from violence and now, a pandemic.

Access control helps secure the perimeter of the school’s property, including each entry point. Effective access control policies are augmented by technology tools that modernize and automate an individual’s access to a building, and what access privileges they have once they enter. These systems also help make the campuses more welcoming and are capable of quickly securing a facility in an emergency situation. Overall, access control has become the backbone of modern-day educational settings.

Schools and universities strive to make access control simple yet secure. So what trends are driving access control deployments? What technologies are paving the way to more robust levels of security and increased functionality? We take a closer look below.

On the Go

Mobile credentials are part of the future of access control as more organizations transition away from physical keys and cards. In the education market, where a younger generation looks to leverage their smartphones as much as possible, mobile credentials can be beneficial for operational and security purposes. Instead of issuing new badges to students every semester, schools can keep records of students via their phones, which could also prove critical in the event of a lockdown and quickly assessing where students are.

Ease of Integration

With so many different buildings and facilities making up an educational campus, integrating multiple systems into one platform has become the ideal strategy for achieving complete protection. Quickly integrating an access control platform with existing hardware and software investments enables users to gain more intelligence from their security systems. A combined solution that funnels data from multiple devices and systems into a single interface provides a much higher level of awareness of operations across a school district.

Cloud Cover

The cloud continues to be a valuable and convenient option for security management, and educational facilities are likely to look to it to leverage its flexibility and ease of use for efficient access control. Cloud-based access control and video management solutions can seamlessly monitor activity throughout a campus and link events at doors in the case of an incident. The cloud also allows automatic updates to muster reports based on multiple factors, such as a student exiting a building.

Remote Monitoring

The demand for remote management and monitoring is driven by increased demand for mobility in general, which can apply to all aspects of access control. It will become increasingly paramount for school security officials to investigate alarms, manage credentials, and view security data from any location at any time.

Educational facilities today are experiencing unprecedented challenges, and the safety of students and staff is more critical than ever before. Stakeholders can stay ahead of risks by taking a proactive stance on security, planning, and taking advantage of the latest technology trends to augment policies and procedures.