Whether you are a national law firm or a technology company renting space in multiple buildings across a city, state or the country, the business of running your business takes up much of your time. So when you add additional responsibilities onto that, things can quickly become overwhelming. It seems like there is perpetually “too much” of one thing or “not enough” of another.
Increasingly companies like yours are turning to outside resources for help and when it comes to security, your managed service provider can provide just the right solution to your most common pain points. “We believe that no matter what industry you are in, if you are an organization that has employees who are going to any one of your offices throughout the country, you need an access control and security solution that will provide you with convenience, safety and security for your employees,” says Harry Choi, vice president and general manager, enterprise solutions, for Kastle Systems. “We can help.”
Here are some ways that managed security in general and the latest platforms from Kastle can help with some of your top five most frustrating issues:
1. From too many vendors, to a single point of contact – When you are spread out geographically, working with multiple security vendors can quickly become a challenge. “A current typical practice is if you are a facilities manager, you have to deal with many vendors: one for the Los Angeles office and another for New York,” Choi says. Even more frustratingly, each technology could require a different vendor: one for access, another for video, etc.
A single service managed provider not only makes this unnecessary, it can make these technologies work seamlessly together, while giving you a single provider and point of contact for everything. “We provide a genuine 24/7 fully managed services experience,” Choi explains.
2. From too many technologies, to a single solution – When you work with multiple vendors in multiple states, you inevitably end up with multiple technologies, usually for the same purpose. Employees that frequently travel to more than one office may even end up having to carry multiple credentials, or have to waste time checking in and getting enrolled in a different branch’s security system.
“When it comes to physical security a lot of that is done on an individual site basis with no common enterprise-wide technology practices,” Choi says. Integrating your enterprise-wide active directory with security can make onboarding and off-boarding easier, seamlessly integrating systems so they can grant or deny access in real time based on a single source of authority. Kastle is a big proponent of open standards, including championing the new PLAI standard (physical logical access interoperability initiative), which was designed to facilitate easier integration between physical access control and active directory, as well as other services related to identity.
3. From not enough time, to outsourced efficiency – Trying to be a “jack of all trades” rarely works out. There is simply not enough time in the day, week or month to do it all. If security isn’t your core expertise, it can take even longer. Other complex technological fields have figured out that the managed service approach can save not only time, but money as well.
“If you look at the IT industry, it is very much now a standard business practice that is well understood,” Choi says. “If you can hire experts that can do this for you so you don’t have to worry about it, why not? Less than 10 years ago the whole notion of giving your IT to a cloud provider was brand new. Now the thinking is, ‘why wouldn’t you?’” When it comes to security, the hardware and software costs are just the beginning. Doing things manually and often repeatedly not only add up; they waste precious time.
“You may have a team of security or facilities management staff, but even if you have that role, the amount of things you have to think about and work on is tremendous,” Choi says. “From the kitchen equipment to safety around facilities design, to changing offices, there are too many things going on at once and it is difficult for these people to slice out a part of their day or week to think about access control, video surveillance and all the solutions we offer in a thoughtful manner.”
4. From not enough convenience, to user-friendly solutions – Today’s employees demand that their security is also convenient. Carrying multiple cards or having to go through cumbersome processes isn’t going to cut it, particularly with the up and coming millennial workforce. “Employees of today’s generation expect technology to be part of every aspect of their work environment,” Choi says.
App-based credentials and cloud management are the way forward. With the cloud-based myKastle security portal, a facilities manager can go to a single tool to see what is going on in any location, even allowing them to open and close doors from their mobile device. “There is always a pendulum of balance between convenience and security,” Choi says. “We maintain the same level of security, or better, with our convenient, innovative solutions such as KastlePresence, a hands-free mobile access platform. If you lose a badge it could be floating around somewhere; but with an app on your phone, you are able to manage that better.”
5. From too much information, to actionable insights – One of the biggest topics of the day is how much information is gathered by systems, and more importantly what to do with it. A security system potentially gathers thousands (or more) points of information every day between access control, video and other systems. This is information that could be harnessed to provide valuable data and input on business processes, from hoteling to conference room usage. But without a centralized and managed system, that can be difficult to do.
“The big topics of the day for the chief administrative officer or facilities manager are all around efficient utilization of real estate or configuration of that space,” Choi says. “Many organizations wrestle with that. How much space do we grant for hoteling? Do we really need to increase the footprint in one location or shrink it in another?” Managed security providers like Kastle inherently get a lot of useful data from the systems they manage and Kastle is not only sharing that data today in useable report form, but also developing ways to gain even more ROI in the future.
