Learn The Best Practices For Physical Security
Gaining access to enterprise-class security is a matter of following the best practices in the industry. Implementing security policies can be confusing even for seasoned individuals. With the right help and talent, you can make the most of an effective plan and help protect your assets and data.
7 Best Practices For Physical Security
1. Technology + Skills
Every organization needs a way to manage access to personnel inside and outside their premises. It ensures that only authorized personnel can access certain parts of the building.
To implement a viable security solution requires help from both specialized individuals and technology. Only then can you safeguard your business against major threats, cyber attacks, natural disasters, fire outbreak, intruders, and so on.
The right mix of technology and strategies formed by specialized teams can offer maximum benefit. The specialized team helps form policies that guide your perimeter network, security staff, countermeasures, and security scope.
Physical security helps with the big picture, so don’t focus on the individual parts alone.
2. The Need For Multiple Specialists
You may think that one security professional can help you set up the complete security stack required to safeguard your organization, but you’re mistaken!
As mentioned in the previous pointer, physical security covers a huge landscape that is impossible for a single individual to comprehend. An organization is secured by the unison of different working parts.
Professionals working with physical security in NYC often specialize in specific areas of interest. The various areas include risk assessment, architecture design, cloud security solutions, monitoring, legal and policies, disaster management, employee training, and so on.
Enterprise security is not a one-man game.
3. Comprehensive Access Control System (ACS)
Access control begins at your security perimeter. Your perimeter should be equipped with fences, surveillance cameras, security personnel to monitor areas beyond your premises.
A comprehensive ACS makes use of authentication cards, advanced security locks, biometric authentication and so on. An organization that follows best practices for physical security implements access control at the first point of entry where employees or visitors need to show their identification cards to gain entry and use intercoms.
IDs may include employee badges, referral code, biometric scan and so on. Once individuals end their day, they can leave the premises by using the same IDs that brought them in. This helps keep a systematic log of entry and exits and you don’t need to worry if you locked somebody inside!
You can never be too safe!
| Just as physical security, cybersecurity services in NYC have gained massive response from small and mid-sized businesses considering the number of daily data breaches happening in the city.
Just as your employees need to be safe from hazards, your computer systems need to be safe from cyberattacks that hold the potential to compromise your entire network grid. According to Statista, in 2018, 13,107 cybersecurity incidents were reported by federal agencies. The count has increased since every year. |
4. Make Employees Feel Safe, Not Threatened!
Many times strong security principles swap their place with complicated security principles that are very tiring and not user-friendly. Best practices allow employees and visitors to feel safe and secure inside the premises.
Look at how well your organization can maintain integrity of company assets and confidentiality of data at all endpoints without enforcing strict policies that make employees feel uncomfortable working in the premises.
Physical security’s first objective should be to safeguard the employees and related resources. Then, secure the company assets and make use of backup copies to restore business necessary operations if a disaster happens.
The test of a good security architecture is how well can you protect your assets.
5. Simple, Yet Robust
Simple defensive methods at perimeter check include fenced walls, security personnel that help keep unauthorized individuals from entering your perimeter. Barriers installed at security checks prove useful in stopping forced entry of vehicles.
Beyond this point, you can implement simple locks at different doors that work under a managed access control system that allows only authorized individuals to go through. To open the door, one only needs to swipe the card.
See the difference between the security implemented at the main perimeter gate and inside the premises. Once a user has been authenticated, the person shouldn’t go through the same process multiple times.
For example, a fitness studio can install a setting in their access control system, such that when a user unlocks a door, it stays open for the next 10 minutes, considering the user has to go back and forth to collect necessary things to begin the class.
The simpler the security, the better it is!
6. Documentation
It’s always in your best interest to keep a log record of proof of events in case you get into trouble. Small businesses often face the challenge of lost assets such as laptops, files and other sellable items.
These activities don’t make it to the big screen but it affects the routine functioning of small businesses. Make sure you install CCTV cameras in your premise that will help you go back in time and see what exactly happened. A camera with night vision capability can help as well.
You can even set up alerts in your ACS to prompt when two people enter under a single login attempt, or if your cameras find something suspicious or even worse.
A record may become your best defense.
7. Testing
You’ll never know the strength of your physical security until you test it. There are scenarios where you have to consider the likelihood of a realistic attack, that’s when you form a test campaign team that prepares false scenarios to break your system.
Another scenario where you have to implement a test campaign is when employees don’t understand security weaknesses and buy into them leading to compromised systems. For example, when an employee clicks a spam email and ends up with a ransomware attack on his desktop.
I know it works because my system has gone through worse!