What is the difference in a burglar alarm system and access control? In what circumstances is one more beneficial than the other?
An access control system is designed to grant or deny access (entry) or egress (exit) of a building, area, office or other secure point based on possession of a certain item (card) or physical trait. It is made to keep unauthorized people out of an area.
The most common form of access control is a key and lock. You have a key to your home and I don’t. I have a key to my home and you don’t. In its simplest form, that is access control.
There are three primary limiting factors with a lock and key access control system.
1 – There is no reporting. I can’t tell who has entered my home with a system using a lock and key.
2 – Cost. It is inexpensive to replace a single key. It is very expensive to have a locksmith come re-key several locks and replace dozens of keys.
3 – Ease of duplicating the key.
An electronic access control system solves these three issues.
Most any current access control system gives you thousands of options to report access into a facility. Examples include: by door, by user, by date/time, or any combination of these and other factors.
The initial expense of adding electronic access control to a facility seems quite high. Cost usually runs between $500.00 – $1,500.00 per door. After that initial expense, costs decrease significantly. If an employee / user leaves the organization, a simple programming change removes their credential from the systems. There is no need to change locks or worry about retrieving keys. Simply remove their $10.00 (average cost for card/keyfob/prox patch) card from the system.
Because of the complex nature of proximity cards, the most common access control credential, and the uniqueness of biometric credentials, it is almost impossible to duplicate an access control credential. No more “everyone in the county has a key to my building” because employees/users make copies of their keys to give to their friends.
Access control systems are more expensive to install than a burglar alarm system, but do a much better job at providing security.
A burglar alarm system is designed NOT to keep people out of your home or business, but to detect when someone enters. A motion detector won’t trip the alarm system until someone is inside to move four steps (the UL standard) in front of the motion detector. A door contact doesn’t trip the alarm system until someone opens the door.
Burglar alarm systems are typically less expensive than access control systems. A basic system for a home or small business usually starts under $500.00. They are also less secure than an access control system because many of the devices, such as motion detectors and glassbreak detectors, don’t trip until the burglar is entering the facility.
Burglar alarm systems are NOT access control systems! If I have a key to your home, I can get in….even if I don’t have a code to your alarm system. Responding agencies, like police and sheriff’s officers, are not likely to arrest anyone entering your home or business if they have a key, even if they don’t know the code to the alarm system.
Many schools and churches will give their employees / congregants keys to the building, but fail to instruct them on how to use the alarm system. This creates a false alarm problem as police will get dispatched to the burglar alarm and find a person with a key, but no code, on-site. They are authorized to be there, but were never trained or given a code to operate the alarm system.
We highly recommend both access control systems and burglar alarm systems. Access control systems are especially useful when there are many users, like churches and schools. However, most business could benefit from an access control system. Between the reporting and ease of adding/deleting credentials, the return on investment for almost all business is less than 24 months.
Want to talk more about it? Please call us.
Guard Tronic, Inc.
Proven Property Protection since 1959
(800) 542-7866
info@guardtronic.com