Modern technological advances have made offices and other places of work more secure than ever before. All too often, however, office managers fail to upgrade their systems to keep pace with the latest developments. If you are in charge of keeping your co-workers safe in their working environment and want to ensure that criminality like petty theft is kept to a minimum in your office, then read on to discover some of the most up-to-date gadgets around for improving security.
Internet-Enabled Intercoms
Many offices rely on an intercom system to allow people to gain entry to the building. This is especially useful if your office is not located near to the main door. Not only do delivery drivers use intercoms but also colleagues without keys and visitors arriving at your business. Old-fashioned intercom systems relay a voice back and forth and usually come with a mechanism for unlocking the door. However, modern intercoms can be answered anywhere if they are able to access the internet. This means being able to respond to visitors even if you are out of the office from nothing more than a smartphone. Internet-enabled intercom systems are especially helpful when you receive deliveries out of usual office hours and when you want to view who is calling as well as speaking to them.
Smart Access Control
Nowadays, providing office workers with keys or a punch-in code to gain access to your place of work is outdated. Modern offices provide their staff with so-called near-field communication technology which allows them to use a card to gain entry. The major security advantage with such a system is that workers can have their card's rights rescinded immediately, which is helpful in situations where employees are leaving work for the last time. All this can be done remotely by computer, too, if wanted. You can even assign a temporary pass to a worker who has forgotten their card at little or no cost with such an access control system.
Security Cameras
CCTV used to mean installing cameras around the office as well as at the entrance and then running cables back to a central recording spot, usually a VCR. With only one way of recording multiple cameras, the images were often not of a sufficient quality to be useful following an incident. However, modern webcams can be installed which send their images over a wireless connection to a central server—a big advance. This means improved imagery can be taken more frequently than the old-style CCTV systems could ever manage. It is also possible to review historic images and to keep them for longer without building up huge banks of VCR tapes.