No matter how big or small your security system is, to keep it in good shape there are regular tasks you should perform.
One thing that is often overlooked is reviewing security users – staff and contractors who have access codes or cards to your premises. Removing ex employees, old contractors and temporary access passes help to reduce the risk of unauthorised entry, and ensures there are no “grey” areas should an entry or incident occur outside of hours. We are all used to regularly changing our passwords on our PC network logins but we don’t do this for our security systems. This is also another area of risk.Staff may forget their code and “borrow” one off another staff member. Two people or more using the one code make it very difficult to ascertain responsibility.
It is good security practice to change codes regularly, depending on the size of your database you may do this periodically or complete sections at time over the year. How you go about conducting your audit will depend on what type of system you have, and if you have software on site or access the information through a keypad.
The first step is retrieving the current security user information from your security system. To do this you will need your security system master code. If you need help getting started here we have most user manuals on our website, or you can call us for help. Most systems we can access remotely, and upload this information and provide it in a report. Once you have your information you need to reconcile this with a staff list from HR as well as current contractors that may work on your premises, don’t forget to include the cleaners and any delivery contractors that may enter outside of your normal hours.
From there you can add / edit or delete as required. If you don’t have software for your security system you can either make a copy of your user list – you should only record the User Number, User Name and Card Number (if applicable), no codes. OtherwisePIA can securely store that information for you.
There is one final step in the process if you are managing this yourself and your security system is monitored back to base. If your security codes or cards have access to turn on or off the alarm you should provide a copy of your User List to the monitoring centre. You only need to provide the user name and user number, don’t send the code. Just send it through on an email tomonitoring@piasecuritygroup.com.au The monitoring centre will enter this in their database so if there is a need to identify an entry to your premises all the information is there on the report. If PIA program your users for you then don’t worry, we take care of this too.