What are the primary concerns of physical security programs

Information stored in equipment being disposed, redistributed, or sold must be securely removed to prevent the disclosure of the information to unauthorized parties. For more on security related to the principle of availability, see Domain Business Continuity. The policy on Security of Information Technology Resources still applies, regardless of the placement or location of the equipment. The Office of Financial Management Services governs the process for removing capital equipment from university property.

While non-capital equipment is not covered by this policy, appropriate inventory and tracking methods should still be used, particularly if the non-capital equipment contains or processes sensitive information. Do you plan to travel abroad and take your university issued laptop computer, digital storage device, or any encryption products with you?

The Export Control Office in the Office of Research Administration can help you determine if your university-issued electronic components require a license prior to international travel, can provide tips for international travel with information stored on electronic components, and can provide a list of sanctioned and restricted parties and entities with whom IU is prohibited by federal law from doing business with. Contact them at export iu. In addition to digital media, information classified as Critical stored in paper form must also be securely destroyed.

The IU Office of Procurement Services maintains a list of contracted vendors; there is at least one vendor located near each IU campus. Secure areas Standards-based expectations for this domain. Equipment security Standards-based expectations for this domain. Placement Appropriate physical safeguards must be placed on equipment that stores or processes institutional data. Disposal and Redistribution Information stored in equipment being disposed, redistributed, or sold must be securely removed to prevent the disclosure of the information to unauthorized parties.

Placement The policy on Security of Information Technology Resources still applies, regardless of the placement or location of the equipment. Financial Management Services Policy I — : Off-Premise Capital Equipment Control While non-capital equipment is not covered by this policy, appropriate inventory and tracking methods should still be used, particularly if the non-capital equipment contains or processes sensitive information.

The primary purpose of this role is coordinate between field and SSC personnel to assist in follow-up on incidents, design and implement programs supporting strategic initiatives and run the business activities. This position will serve as the first point of contact on emergency response items, facilitating intelligence gathering and summarization for the Director of Asset Protection Operations.

This position will facilitate the information cascade of programs and events from SSC and field personnel and communicate updates to the Director of Asset Protection Operations for direction and critical decisions. Maintain decision rights for any changes being recommended by business partners to this platform.

Access control may start at the outer edge of your security perimeter, which you should establish early in this process. You can use fencing and video surveillance to monitor access to your facility and secure the outdoor area, especially if you have on-site parking or other outside resources.

A comprehensive access control system and strategy would also include the use of advanced locks, access control cards, mobile phones, or biometric authentication and authorization.

Most spaces start their access control at the front door, where cardholders swipe their unique identification badges, or mobile phone, to gain entry. From there, you can place card readers on almost anything else, including offices, conference rooms and even kitchen doors.

At the end of the day, each employee swipes out using the same process, eliminating the need for clocking out or wondering if anyone is still inside the building after closing hours. Surveillance is another important component to consider in your space. Modern security systems can take advantage of multiple types of sensors, including ones that detect motion, heat and smoke, for protection against intrusion and accidents alike. These sensors can hook up directly to your alarm system, allowing them to trigger alarms and alert you and other system administrators without any human intervention.

Naturally, your security strategy should also include the adoption of surveillance cameras and notification systems, which can capture crimes on tape and allow you to find perpetrators much more easily.

Cloud-based access control systems update over the air and provide real-time reports, allowing you to monitor the system from your mobile dashboard. When disaster strikes, you need to act fast and in accordance with your adopted procedures. That is why you need to test your disaster recovery plan on a regular basis, both on a technological level and a human one.

Drills should test your ability to react both to natural disasters and emergencies caused by internal or outside threats that can threaten data or personal safety. Thankfully, access control systems allow you to tell who is still in your building and who is outside in the case of an emergency that requires evacuation.

You should also check for weak points concerning access to critical business resources, such as server rooms, data centers, production lines, power equipment and anything else that may impact your daily operations.

The specific security practices you should implement when creating a solid physical security strategy always depend on the specifics of your premises and the nature of your business, but many physical security plans share certain core elements.

Working examples of security strategy and countermeasures in physical security have a number of best practices in common. Your first line of defense may include fenced walls or razor wires that work at preventing the average by-passer from entering your security perimeter. Protective barriers are used for preventing the forced entry of people or vehicles and should always be complemented by gates, security guards and other points of security checks.

Once you get to the main building, locks are a very effective method that enables only individuals with a key or a proper level of access control to open or unlock a door or gate. Locks may be connected to a more comprehensive security monitoring system, which is quite simple to do. You can place alarms at each of these points that are triggered if doors are held open for too long, if access cards have been swiped too many times or if a badge has been used to swipe into a space twice before being used to swipe out of a space.

Even better, you can control access based on the time of day, keeping employees out before and after regular hours. Cloud-based access control systems can be programmed or integrated with a calendar so that the doors remain unlocked during certain times of day—for example, a yoga studio might find it useful to keep the door unlocked up to 5 minutes after the class begins and then the doors can automatically lock to prevent the teacher from pausing class or latecomers from interrupting.

Your physical security should incorporate surveillance cameras and sensors that track movements and changes in the environment, especially after hours. You also need to install proper security lighting to ensure all monitored areas are visible at any given moment.

Security guards should cover all entry points to your facility during regular hours and even overnight, while also securing business-critical areas indoors, like labs or server rooms.

Water, smoke and heat detectors, as well as a sprinkler system, are your protection against natural disasters like water leakages, smoke buildup and fire.

Your last point of defense against unauthorized access is the use of smart cards, biometric identification and real-time clearance aimed at allowing only authenticated, authorized personnel to get into a restricted area or gain access to a certain amenity.

In any event, you need to assess all possible scenarios and study past examples of successful physical security procedures before implementing feasible countermeasures for your facilities. By adding multiple layers of authentication you make sure that only the people you have approved can access certain parts of your facility.

Thanks to huge leaps in technology, this is all possible now. While all spaces are different, certain best practices are shared between many different types of physical security plans. Access control, especially, is a great way to make sure that you know who is entering your space, plus when and how they are doing it.

By protecting your important assets and sensitive data, you are saving yourself trouble down the line, especially for spaces that deal with important clients or secretive information. The Physical Security Guide for Workplaces. At one point or another, every office will need to invite visitors inside. 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. 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.

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.

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. 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 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.

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.

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. 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.

A dedicated visitor management system is the secret weapon of any secure office.