Electronic Door Access Systems?
 

Hi all, my dad owns a professional building (and has his dental practice there). He's interested in switching his old fashioned metal keys for proxy cards. I imagine he'll need someone to come out and wire things up, but I'm wondering if anyone has experience with electronic access control systems. What's the cheapest way to proceed that doesn't have an adverse impact on security?

I just went through this effort at one of our buildings. There are a wide number of solutions, and various price ranges. You can have an on-site server, a "monitored" solution, where a 3rd party is in charge of access control (creating new cards, deactivatinglost cards, etc...), or a cloud-based solution where you can administer your own through a cloud solution.

There are solutions that are pretty much DIY (uses batteries, and standard door locks) and ones that are hard wired. He'll need to account for exit ability in case of the strong magnetic locks.

Since you said cheapest, and are coming from existing key locks, the best "cheap" solution we found was the NDE Engage locks by Schlage. That's a simple install and you can get it with free cloud services to administer the lock. I'm fairly certain (not 100% certain) you can administer the lock over wifi with the cloud solution, OR, you can use an app on a mobile device over bluetooth if wifi is not available. These also don't require any special sensors for exit, as they work just like a hotel door lock (card key to open it, and a regular handle on the reverse to exit).

As soon as you go electronic locks, you're subject to new city requirements and the fire marshal will be the most critical of your installation. I'd recommend going with DoorStrikes whenever possible because egress is mechanical much like a normal door. Going Maglocks will be more expensive due to the requirements needed to ensure egress in a failure.

There are many standards out there, ProxCard, MiFare, iClass that are all what most people think of as prox cards. For your install, they'll probably recommend ProxCard II which is basic and will be sufficient.

I've used a few systems in my past and whichever you go with should be controlled by a PLC natively on site and then programmed either by computer onsite or cloud service. Do not get a system that requires a PC to be on 24/7 in order to function. This will inevitably fail and cause issues.

If you want to outsource the whole thing--Stanley Security (formally Sonitrol) can do it all for you pretty much anywhere nationwide. They can remotely configure it and do adds/moves/ and changes for you. Their alarm monitoring is done via microphones and they've been very reliable in my past dealings. They cover Access Control/ Video / and Alarm monitoring. They're not cheap by any means, but they have their own platform that they support so if anything comes up, they have techs that can deal with it internally.

What is his goal in switching to proximity cards? And what is the scope of the deployment? Is this just for his dental suite or for the whole building, including the other tenants?

As an IT manager I've had a number of systems put in place, ranging from full multi-building systems down to self-contained units like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0015...236_SY340_QL65

The best solution really depends on what he's trying to accomplish.

Good questions. It would probably be for the entire building. Right now I'm just doing a pie-in-the-sky what-if because his now-former orthodontist came to the office and took all the orthodontic patients' charts (even charts that weren't for his patients) and I was thinking it would be much better if we could have remotely disabled his key to the building.

The thing is that my dad doesn't want to spend money now, so it's more about figuring out options for the future. But I'd be looking for a system that is remotely and centrally manageable and can control the different building suites independently of each other. Thanks!