FROM THE INDUSTRY
the activity of the key even if it’s lost. If someone thinks they have lost their key, when actually they’ve handed it to their mate, the system switches it off. But if that mate of his tries to use it, it won’t unlock the cylinders or the padlocks but still records that event. Audit trails will show that key was reported stolen last week, and yet it’s turned up trying to get into that cabinet yesterday. You can then put an action in place to investigate what’s happened. What’s the worst offender in security breaches? naivété? BEING Overly trusting? Laziness? Often people don’t realise how bad it can be until they’ve had a breach; then they’re probably a bit more secure about it, but that’s just human nature. Unless you’ve ever been subject to a break-in, you probably are a bit slack about locking the back door at night. I like to think that we’ve got enough experience, we’ve been doing this a long time. Abloy as a business has been around for over a hundred years. It’s 60 years this year that Abloy has been in the UK, so we’ve built that trust. We say ‘Abloy for trust’, because it’s important to us that you get the right solution for your application. We spend a lot of time understanding the pain points, what you’re suffering. We’ve been doing this not just in the telecoms world, but in all the CI sectors water, in energy, in transport. We bring those learnings together which is how we solve problems. The work we do with standards and this sector is no exception; security of assets and who’s accessing assets is critical and to this end the NPSA (National Protective Security Authority) provide guidance on what should or shouldn’t be done/used based on the risk level and extensive testing of solutions. Do you deal with biometric solutions? It can be quite costly to deploy biometrics into infrastructure, especially where you’ve got no power. If you are out in the middle of nowhere in bad weather conditions or poor light, it just means no power and no data.
allowed to operate the lock, that it’s allowed to operate the lock at this time, on this day. It’s also extracting any audit trails; any updates from the key are also downloaded into the cylinder. The key is paired with the individual’s phone via Bluetooth so you can use the biometrics of the phone as part of the authentication process. The phone communicates with the server to provide all the updates, but you don’t need to worry about a signal at the site once the key has been updated. The exact opposite of what happens in a domestic setting. We’ve all given house keys to people then forgotten who has them. Exactly. With this system, if a key is lost, you don’t have to run the risk having to change all your locks. In theory, as a homeowner you are controlling access to your home because, say, there’s only four keys in circulation and you know all four people who’ve got them. But when you start getting into organisation where there’s hundreds, if not thousands, of people walking around with keys, that’s a different story. In other articles in Broadband we touch on the surprisingly slack security in multinationals that leads to hacking and other breaches. Why do you think the approach to security is so relaxed? Companies do things for convenience. It’s human nature; we can’t remember things, we haven’t got the time and importantly, companies are often under-resourced in this area. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve installed a mechanical master key system, designed with different levels of access, but the moment you hand the keys out it stops, because no one wants to manage it or there isn’t the resource to manage it. Often there isn’t the recognition that someone needs ownership of the system. With our system, at least when you find out that a key’s been lost or stolen or damaged, you can switch it off and the key is blocked. The system traces
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Volume 46 No.3 September 2024
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