What to Ask When Installing Biometric Access Control Systems?

The framework of ensuring security by having flexible control over who can enter or exit the secured premises. Access control systems are almost everywhere, albeit in different formats and structures. Today, with the advancement of technology, the convenience of just a touch or a glance to gain access into your building has lured many users to biometric access control systems. So, if you’re considering installing this technology as a security measure for your organization, given below are a few questions you should consider before installing the ideal biometric security system.

1. If I already have a strong perimeter of security, do I still need biometrics?

In order to be in a productive commercial environment, a good access control system is essential. Biometrics helps HR and managers to focus on critical business-related issues rather than monitoring and managing attendance records of the employees. This factor makes biometrics a better employee attendance management system as well. Compared to other security parameters for allowing access to employees, biometrics is the best access control system for doors as it verifies every access attempt to your premises. This shields your property from any kind of threat by limiting the reach an employee or a visitor might have.

2. Which biometric authentication should I consider implementing?

There are many biometric access control systems providers available in the market, so you should consider the one according to your company’s needs. Biometrics range from face and iris recognition to a fingerprint scanner, to voice recognition, and many more. Some methods of biometric security work the best in areas that are high security but low population zones like face recognition and fingerprint scanning system. Suppose your building has many visitors, then card recognition would be the best system for your company.

3. How user-friendly is my new solution?

Authentication systems should be easier to use, or else adoption rates will be low, and abandonment rates will be high. This should be the most important point to consider. Analyze your workforce and implement the system that your people would work best with, whether it is a card reader, fingerprint scanner, or face reader.

It has been proven that biometrics helps the end-user to relieve the stress of memorizing passwords as biometrics are a progressive system and take only a few seconds for authentication.

4. How can I identify a good biometric system?

A biometric system is considered to be good when these five characteristics are fulfilled:

a) Should be unique: The feature being captured for matching purposes should be unique to each person for better visitor management, employee attendance, as well as canteen management.

b) Should be repeatable: The biometrics of an individual who is registered should remain in the system for repeated use over a period of time. If they have to be synced again, the system should capture the same characteristics as earlier. This particular feature makes the system efficient and more trustworthy.

c) Should be comprehensible: The characteristics of an individual should be easy to capture with a simple scanner. Employees should be effortlessly able to use the system and shouldn’t have to fiddle with it to approve authentication.

d) Should be universal: A sound biometric access control system should accommodate all the segments of the dedicated group and not just a particular portion. For example, all four branches of different scales and sizes of one organization should have a universal biometric protocol for visitor administration, access control, employee attendance etc. Each branch shouldn’t have to deploy a different system.

e) Should be acceptable: Usually, when using biometric as an access control system, people have a significant concern about their privacy and have many objections. The company’s focus should be on implementing such a biometric method that is acceptable by all.

5. Is a biometric attendance system useful for me?

A biometric employee attendance management system can be very useful; it helps to get rid of paper-based monitoring of attendance and also is one of the most accurate tracking solutions. It saves time and increases the company’s productivity level, and saves money, which can help reduce the overall cost to the company. Biometric technology can help benefit the organization by improving the overall management of your workforce.

Additional Benefits of Biometric Systems

Apart from error-free attendance and time data of the employees, there are several other benefits of installing a good biometric system:

a) Ensures safety: The biometric system is based on facial, iris, fingerprint recognition, or the behavioral characteristics of an individual, making it difficult to hack the system. Hence, it makes sure that there’s no trespassing on the premises. This also provides the employees a sense of security within the premises.

b) Ease in the payroll process: Biometric attendance system plays an essential role in the payroll process by providing accurate data about the employees. Biometrics has replaced the manual tracking attendance system by digitizing it, making it less time-consuming and error-free.

c) Prevents proxies: Biometrics uses biological data to recognize the person, which does not allow forging or duplicating passwords. This is one of the most significant advantages of this access control system, making it a more secure system than others.

d) Increases Employee credibility: Biometric systems keep track of the time frame of the employees’ activities and help to generate accurate data, which makes employees more productive and makes them understand the importance of punctuality, resulting in increased credibility.

e) Work satisfaction: As the working hours are recorded, and the attendance is being tracked, employees feel a sense of satisfaction as they are being seen and their work is being appreciated. With this system, employees do not even mind the overtime as that time is also being recorded. Later on, they might get rewarded because of that; these increases work satisfaction among the employees.