Tailgating is one of the most common security breaches. What typically happens is, an authorized employee of your building kindly opens the door for an unauthorized “visitor” without knowing. This seemingly innocent situation allows the undocumented intruder to tailgate into your building and gain entry. What started as a kind gesture, unexpectedly exposes your staff to potential threats, theft, domestic violence, or worse, terrorism.
While exterior threats are dangerous, internal threats are just as dangerous, too. Depending on your occupation or building, there may be certain areas you don’t want every employee to access. Healthcare facilities especially should have various restricted access points throughout the building to safeguard laboratories, operating rooms, pharmacies, and more. For businesses, areas like data centers, sensitive files, or equipment rooms should have restricted access points that only allow authorized users to enter with certified permission.
Tailgating also impacts productivity and business management practices. Whenever an intruder enters your place of business and an emergency or complaint occurs, you may be forced to shut down for the day, let people off, or deal with an unexpected crisis that takes you and your staff away from work. Inaccurate headcounts during an emergency might also get others left behind or cause safety personnel to waste time searching for people that aren’t on the premises.
While maintaining a secure building is always the primary objective, access control systems aren’t always in place or up-to-date. Most business owners don’t contact a third party to test their existing physical access control system, according to a new survey by HID Global. And over half of them state high-security technologies are important, but they aren’t implementing them well or at all.
Educate Your Staff
Talk to your staff about the risks associated with tailgating. Explain the common ways tailgating happens and why it’s dangerous to hold open a door for someone they don’t know.
Implement Visitor Badges
To help your employees understand who is a visitor and why they are there, you should have visitors and temporary employees wear clear identification badges and educate your staff on what to do if they notice anything suspicious.
Install Video Surveillance
Installing a video surveillance camera throughout your facility will help identify a criminal who has successfully entered your building and if any items were stolen, vandalized or harmed.
Manage Access Control System
Installing an access control system will ensure only authorized persons have access to specific entry points and areas of your building. You can customize them so each employee has a set of restrictions and also monitor access to specific areas at specific times. You can add analytics and sensors to detect when multiple people are attempting to enter a door with only one valid credential.
Hire Reception Staff
A reception desk is a great place to monitor who enters and exits your building and helps prevent unauthorized criminals from gaining entry. It will also remind your employees to use their own access card instead of tailgating on another employee when entering the building.
For more information about safeguarding your building and how to prevent criminal tailgating, contact Fairchild Communications Systems, Inc.
