How security solutions should co-exist and communicate on today’s college campuses

A student swipes their ID to enter their dorm; a custodian unlocks a supply closet; a campus police officer returns a cruiser to the station. These everyday moments share something in common — they all depend on how well a university's security, IT, and operations teams work together.

As schools move away from siloed systems toward more streamlined operations, technology is playing a pivotal role in making campuses safer and more efficient.

Speaking their language

The signature of effective security technology, especially on college campuses, is in its ability to integrate with an existing ecosystem. How solutions communicate and operate within an established infrastructure is vitally important to their later adoption by all users.

Technology should make operations easier and safer, and if it is not integrated properly, it can be a burden to users and ultimately prove to be cost-prohibitive, with valuable downtime spent trying to essentially force a square peg into a round hole.

An interesting example of this lies within physical key management. Keys are used widely across college campuses in many capacities, both as a primary access credential and a redundant one to more digitalized assets like badges and fobs. How campuses manage keys differs, but intelligent key cabinets are growing in popularity as they clearly prove value in the two points noted above – safety and efficiency – while also communicating effectively with a central access control platform.