Your facility's security aims protect your people and your property. And just as your assets can be physical or digital, so can security threats and solutions.
It's crucial to keep track of who enters your facility and its private areas, as well as when visitors and employees leave. This type of surveillance may help prevent security breaches and aid in investigating breaches later on.
Below, we'll look at seven ways a visitor management system (VMS) like Sine may assist you in reducing the likelihood of security breaches to protect your business.
Businesses may sometimes be concerned about data security than physical security. But the truth is that they're closely related, and security experts advocate a holistic approach to business security. Without physical security on your worksite, you may not be able to keep your machines and servers safe. That's why it's crucial to consider both types of security when considering how to protect your equipment, networks, servers, data, and other assets.
Here are seven of the many ways you can use VMS to help enhance your on-premise security and assist in protecting both physical and digital assets.
Despite the trend towards digitization, you'll still find businesses of all sizes and organizations like schools and healthcare facilities using paper check-in forms. This isn't just inefficient; it could also potentially be a security threat, especially when you're asking people to write down their names, phone numbers, and any other personal information in a place where prying eyes can easily see it.
Paper check-in may not be doing your business any favors when it comes to data collection and physical security anyway. It's easy to write down the wrong information, lose sign-in sheets, or enter data incorrectly into digital files later on. When this happens, any requirements to know who was on site on a specific day may be incomplete.
Instead of relying on paper, Sine's visitor management system allows guests to check in digitally. They can use an app to fill out forms in advance, use their phones to scan QR codes, scan their IDs, or enter their information on an iPad, so it's easily "read" and record.
Asking people to sign in when they arrive on site (or even asking employees to scan ID badges when they're on the premises) can help you maintain control of your property and assets. Sine's VMS can be used to track the entry and exit of visitors in the workplace and assist in ensuring visitors and contractors are provided with guidelines upfront about what they can and cannot do on-site. The formality of a digital check-in system, especially one that requires ID scanning, may also help deter bad actors.
With the Sine Pro app, your hosts can receive an alert when their guests arrive. You can even track when guests check out to ensure no one is present after hours or wandering around after an appointment has ended.
Physical and digital visitor badges can be a great way to identify people on-site you may need supervision. This can be for security purposes or simply to help your employees make them feel welcome and find their way around. Badges can even include QR codes that allow guests to seamlessly check-out.
Physical visitor badges in particular help your employees spot newcomers, check credentials, or to help usher visitors away from areas with valuable or sensitive equipment or data. Whether they're color-coded or printed with appointment information for added security, a visitor badge can help you keep visitors in safe spaces for everyone's protection.
Server rooms, laboratories, construction sites, and storage facilities are just a few of the many places you may want to prevent visitors from entering. That's where Sine's geofencing features come in handy.
Geofencing employs GPS-based technology to build a digital perimeter around your worksite.
These custom virtual boundaries can also help you send reminders or emergency messages to people in a specific area who are at risk or need to leave.
Whether you need to prevent visitors or employees without proper training or credentials from entering a site is without prior authorization, using Sine's preregistration features can help you enhance control of your site without physically guarding the entrance.
Asking visitors and contractors to preregister for site access with Sine's VMS can help you streamline compliance with safety regulations, helping to ensure everyone has the appropriate safety training to be in a specific location, and even serves as a reminder of on-site protocols guests need to follow. Sine can even collect acknowledgment signatures for liability waivers before guests arrive on site.
Sine's VMS can also prescreen workers and streamline onboarding to help manage contractors and help ensure they're familiar with facility protocols.
If a bad actor is not deterred by the mere presence of a check-in system, you can still use Sine to identify individuals you put on a watchlist. When a visitor who is flagged on your watchlist tries to enter your site, a designated "watcher" will receive a notification and choose how to act on it. It can be as simple as denying access or calling security, or it may trigger a site-wide emergency alert, depending on the threat level.
Watchlists can be further enhanced through Sine's integrations, including Descartes MK Denial and the US Offender Search.
Perhaps the most important role a VMS plays in a company's security is that it allows site managers to think about how to organize access control. It raises questions about which areas should be off-limits, who belongs on site, and how much protection businesses need to keep their assets safe.
Better security not only can reduce the likelihood of accidents and thefts, it can boost employee productivity and helps you retain them in the long run. According to a 2022 State of Employee Safety Report, 73% of people said that feeling safe is “extremely important” when at work, yet only 53% felt their employer considered their safety of equal importance. The good news is that 55% of the report's respondents said their employers were putting more effort into security than in previous years.
Limiting access to a worksite in order to keep people and property safe involves deterrent, detective, and protective measures.
